Shortcut Management and Shortcut Lists

• Jul 13, 2017 - 09:36

The main focus of my summer project for MuseScore is shortcut management. MuseScore is used by a vast array of users who use different operating systems, input languages and keyboard layouts. As a result, in many cases, there are conflicts in the default keyboard shortcuts. With a shortcut management system, I aim to resolve these conflicts. The basic idea of the shortcut management system is detecting the user’s keyboard layout and then appropriately loading a list of default keyboard shortcuts to avoid any conflicts. This means that different keyboard layouts will have different lists of keyboard shortcuts. The software now runs a startup wizard that asks users to input their keyboard layouts and then automatically chooses the required shortcut list. There is also a new functionality to save and load shortcut lists where users can customize their shortcuts in the preferences menu and save these customizations as xml files on their computer. It is therefore easy to create custom shortcut lists. Subsequently, they can load these files as they please. All these features will eliminate keyboard shortcut conflicts.

The main developer challenge lies in creating shortcut lists for different keyboard layouts and operating systems. Presently, different shortcut lists are maintained for Mac and Windows systems. Therefore, each shortcut list for a particular keyboard layout will have multiple versions depending on the OS. It is nearly impossible for a developer to create shortcut lists that cover all possible conflicts for different keyboard layouts. It is with this in mind, that I request the MuseScore community to contribute shortcut lists for different keyboard layouts.

If you use a keyboard layout which is not US QWERTY, follow the following steps
1. Download recent nightly {link}
2. Customize shortcuts in Preferences > Shortcuts
3. Save the shortcut file and attached it in a comment
4. List the changes you made, your language, OS, and keyboard layout in the same comment


Comments

a rather special case.
I run Ubuntu 17.04 with French BÉPO keyboard. As you see in http://bepo.fr/wiki/Accueil the UNDERSCORE is given by AltGr+SPACE

UNDERSCORE is used by Musescore to trigger a melism line.....but the one given by the above mentioned keyboard just act as SPACE. The turn around is to modify the configuration files by switching UNDERSCORE with the long dash located in AltGr+"8"

On another hand, and whichever the keyboard, as a Frenchman I think "do ré mi...." and the note shortkeys "A B C..." are not significant for me. An easier disposition is to use the 15 keys of the central line for the succession of notes, thus allowing redundance.

In reply to by robert leleu

Can you provide a shortcuts.xml for this?

For German (and some other languages) I'd like to have H being the shortcut for the note B, as that's the name in German, ideally B then would be the shortcut for Bb (again, in German), but the current system doesn't allow for this unfortunatly.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

Why not allow for the option of every note having a shortcut? It doesn't have to be defined by default. This would make it a single to enter (e.g.) G# in the key of F. Might as well include possibility of both G# and A-flat, but I wouldn't bother with B# or E# unless you really want to.

In reply to by Jojo-Schmitz

I consider any key combination that can be entered at once a single key. Simply allow for entering any note using the keyboard, but don't define them. The user can then define his own shortcuts with any combination of keys he wants. You would want to define B as B-flat and H as B-natural for German note entry. An American might want to define B-flat using something like alt-shift-B (I haven't checked for conflicts with predefined shortcuts). I could define every flat note as alt-shift-note and every sharp note as ctrl-shift-note. If there are conflicts I can redefine the other shortcuts if I even use them. A French user may want to use something that makes more sense for their note names, which A, B, C... definitely do not.

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