Rationalizing Keyboard Shortcuts

[Marah Mag]

mnemonics rule!

See posts #1 and #8 above, which were all about customized mnemonic menus.

The AHK solution that was recently posted seems promising, and allows for a good mnemonic system that bypasses being limited by the availability of conventional modifiers. But I DO think that this is something that should be more native to Reaper and not require AHK.

I suppose the same thing could be said for much of the SWS functionality -- that the SWS extensions shouldn't be necessary -- but SWS is certainly more native than AHK. And the SWS functionality fully integrates with and appears to the user as just more native actions with a SWS prefix.

In any case... Reaper's customization system is one of its most powerful features... but as more actions have been added... along with toolbar customization... and then mouse modifiers... the system needs to be consolidated, IMO. It's gotten unwieldy.

EDIT: I'm with gopher and Ixix on this one... I'm very interested in seeing how AHK can be used, but don't want the AHK focus to take any pressure off the need to consolidate and better integrate the native customize system. From that pov, a separate thread dedicated to AHK, that reproduced the key posts from above, would actually be a good thing.

[Marah Mag]

I recently decided to occupy the main 'Action' menu and turn it into a mnemonic system.

I cleared everything out of the menu (which I never found any use for) so I could make mnemonic submenus and actions. I didn't get very far, but it's working as a proof of concept.

Alt+A (as usual) opens the menu and serves to initiate a mnemonic sequence.

Then it's just a question of knowing what you want to do and the 'path' you need to follow to accomplish it.

So, pressing Alt+a,c,r sets item (C)hannel mode to (R)ight.

A+a,c,l ... A+a,c,n ... A+a,c,d ... behave accordingly.



If Reaper let us create top level menus, and made the *already existing* 'Customize menu/toolbars' windows easier to work with (ditto the Actions list), doing this kind of thing would be nothing at all.

Currently, it takes a lot of clicking and dragging (when dragging is even possible) and scrolling and window switching and much frustration.

[teeramusic]

I wish the right click shortcuts (such as right clicking a track then pressing D on the keyboard duplicates it... on a PC at least) would be more well documented via underlining or something. I used to use these a lot when I was still using Sonar 8.5.3

[mainframe]

I've been wanting this type of shortcuts ever since I started working with emacs and vim. It would be such a deal changer. You could be able to put real logic behind your combo's. Anyway, I voted +1!

[Vendetta V]

I actaully wish two things

A. we had keyboard modifiers for midi events. taht is SHIFT+CC1 or CTRL+SHIFT+CC15 etc.

and

B. that main alt recording actions worked as they're supposed to with CC events >_<

[ivan.lt]

Bump! Vote: http://forum.cockos.com/project.php?issueid=891
DarkStar, I propose that you expand your feature request to include this idea of "continuous push shortcuts": http://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=141121

[TechDAWg]

Good idea

+1.

I suppose that's how we vote

[ivan.lt]

Just to clarify -- the voting is done here.

[vanhaze]

Let's not forget to wish for better windows focusing in Reaper when dealing with keyboard shortcuts.
Any experienced Reaper user will know what i mean by this.

Sorry, don't feel like giving some examples right now, too tired.

[brainwreck]

This is a really good idea.

I also really like the idea of modifier keys being optional.

Borrowing some ideas from vim sounds interesting, too....s4b (split item(s) at 4 bars)....c4b4p2t4b (copy 4 bars, paste 4 times to track 2 at bar 4)...could get hairy.

I really wish that custom key bindings would be implemented at the os level, available to all applications. Autohotkey isn't a direct substitute. That's a different discussion, though.

[aspiringSynthesisingAlch]

This thread is so lively, and such an intelligent suggestion... I've forgot what even led me here.

I've voted. I'm overwhelmed already.

I have had an iphone for much longer than MIDI. Sysex may as well be regex - still, like lua, python, and I guess to a lesser degree JS, foreign languages...

Having said that, while I agree focus should be kept on this 'FR' (raised ~09? are there any updates on any of this for v5+ flavours of reaper??) I do like to focus on the solution, or a workaround... beggars and choices, no?

With that, are the ReaHotkeys AND the AHK solutions ('reaperlove') both viable, or are there some limitations?

(I'm still mulling everything, trying to UNDERSTAND before attempting...)

Many thanks, brilliant software, brilliant ideas

[foxAsteria]

I'd strongly prefer the ability to designate ANY key, MIDI note or CC as a modifier key.

E.g. holding "T" for all track actions, or "I" for all item actions or "S" for all selection actions...much more intuitive than ctrl, alt, shift and combinations thereof, which can seem pretty arbitrary.

NI Maschine has a dedicated column of modifier buttons (view, select, duplicated etc). This is the main factor contributing to its quick and easy workflow, imo.

[ivan.lt]

Today I again felt the need for custom modifiers, as in the foxAsteria's post above.

[foxAsteria]

I ended up doing something similar via MIDI-Ox. I've designated 9 buttons on my MIDI controller as 'contextual modifiers,' so that I can get up to 8x16=128 actions out of the drum pads and 9 different functions out of the one knob (Maschine Mikro).

Works by momentarily shifting the MIDI channel for the whole controller while holding the 'modifiers.' Pretty much frees me from the mouse for much of my composing, arranging and editing workflow.

[ceanganb]

+1, no doubt.

[foxAsteria]

Originally Posted by TonE

Can you explain a bit more on this? How did you group those 8 action sets? What can you do with each group? Can you share even your Midi-Ox settings here? Asking only out of curiosity, if there would be one new idea, that would be a plus. Thanks in advance.

Sure I can share it. I'll do it in its own thread though so that it can be more useful for others. But here, I'll show you a picture:



The middle row and the "shift" button all send momentary PC messages to MIDI-ox to change MIDI channel for the whole hardware while held. The left row between 'ALT' and 'ALL' is 'TIME.' So the 'Shift' button activates the commands in black and the 'mode' buttons change the context for the grid and other buttons.

It should be easy enough to adapt that to any controller to multiply the number of available shortcuts. You would just choose some buttons to dedicate as modifiers and decide what 'modes' they would activate. My setup is intuitive for me to access all my most common actions, but it probably looks like a confusing mess to other peeps.

I can sketch and arrange a song in Reaper with just this in my lap. Of course I'm also relying on the many Custom and Cycle Actions I've created over the years, as well as useful scripts others have shared. Still, it's a decade old workflow vision, finally, if crudely, realized.

[TonE]

Thanks for sharing the picture and the explanations. If you share more details on a separate topic, I could check if your setup could be replicated, with using only a normal qwerty, without any maschine mikro?

How would I try it?
Reaper running in wine in Ubuntu.
qwerty would be modified via xbindkeys, triggering prepared midi files via aplaymidi. The prepared midi files are generated from xml files. You can create any midi output this way, easily. I am using already this trick for generating midi events to trigger macro features of Sequetron by Phil Tipping.

In this scenario it would replicate your setup. If you would write exact necessary midi events? Best would be having a table with three columns: input, output, description.

Example:
input: press buttonA
output: midi_cc_12 with value 100
description: triggering action_xyz in Reaper

Using my suggested method above you create as simple or complicated setups as you want. The entire qwerty can trigger any midi events you like.
The midi files I am generating with xmltosmf from midi-utilities*, using this:

for file in sequetron/*.xml; do ./xmltosmf $file $file.mid; done

An xml file can look like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<MidiFile DivisionType="PPQ" Resolution="960">
<Track>
<!-- <NoteOnEvent Tick="0" Channel="0" Note="60" Velocity="127"/> -->
<ControlChangeEvent Tick="0" Channel="0" Number="100" Value="1"/>
</Track>
</MidiFile>

A mapping in xbindkeys can look like:

  # fts sweep table 1
  "aplaymidi -p 14:0 ~/Downloads/midi-utilities/bin/sequetron/01.xml.mid"
Control + 1

* http://www.sreal.com/~div/midi-utilities/

[n0ne]

Hi guys,

I stumbled on this thread. Yes it would be awesome! I made a working prototype for this while at the same time making use of RADIAL MENU's.

My brother does a lot of 3D stuff with blender and everything is radial there. Its great because you learn to remember directions with actions/shortcuts. I've implemented the radial menu and then added keys to open the menus. Works kinda like the OP suggested.



I can add in this example "Nexus" by launching the menu (shift + a) and then either chosing up, click, right, click with the mouse or pressing w, d for up, right.

What I really like about this is that the directions get memorized easy and radial menu's are way nicer to find things in. Also you have the added benefit of a visual help if you forget the shortcut. Would be awesome to have these type of menu's as a standard option in reaper. (With transparancy and nice looking buttons ).

I am also looking at generating them from the menu ini bits so they could be made with the reaper menu editor.

Cheers!

[foxAsteria]

@TonE - If you convert the qwerty keys to MIDI and they can trigger on both press and release, I don't see why that wouldn't work. It wouldn't even require too much setup; just assigning some keys to send the appropriate PC messages and telling MIDI-Ox where the files (that I will upload) are located. I'll do a thread soon. Feel free to remind me if I haven't done so in about a week.

Well actually, a problem I can foresee would be that, when typing normally into fields and such, you may accidentally trigger MIDI commands when typing too quickly or pressing simultaneous buttons. Perhaps you would need some sort of timer on it, to avoid interpreting normal keystrokes and held modifiers. Either way, my work can easily be adapted to any MIDI controller, so I feel it's useful enough to post.

[vanhaze]

Originally Posted by ivan.lt

Today I again felt the need for custom modifiers, as in the foxAsteria's post above.

Yes, custom choosen Modifier Keys would be the bomb !
I am on mac, wondering if there is a thirdparty utility that can do this, for in Reaper use.

[ambi]

I'm a long time vim user and programmer, and recently got into my music again.
Setting up keybindings has been a long time annoyance for me in Reaper, so I finally sat down and had a crack at this.
It's only some first steps, but it already works surprisingly well for me.
Some more information is in the (very incomplete) readme.
Currently, I'm running it on OSX, but if you change the file names in mapper.lua to something that doesn't start with /tmp, it should run fine on windows too I think.

https://github.com/ggVGc/reaper-vim

[ambi]

I've made some changes which should make it easy to try out.
There's now a generated keymap that you can just import in Reaper, and I changed the state directory to be local to the scripts. Also tested it in windows now and it works fine.
I'll se if I can make a video at some point, but it's pretty straightforward to use.

https://github.com/ggVGc/reaper-vim

[semiquaver]

-Ambi- oh dear god thank you!!

can't wait to try this out when I get to the studio.

[ambi]

It's because there's no state directory in the reaper-vim folder.
I fixed this now, so you can either re-download the repository, or just create a directory called state in it.

[semiquaver]

yep working!

thought: is it possible to have mode changes that persist?

so: ma -> next marker

then

a would add marker...

[semiquaver]

and some FRs !

I'd love to see vims '.' for repeat implemented

and 'q' for macro recording

...I'm also wondering about gestures

vim uses an action-gesture-number system -

so maybe the we want something like

a add
d delete
g nudge

m marker
i item
t track
g gridline
p env point
e envelope

?

[semiquaver]

Finally - Perhaps a new thread might help this get appropriate attention.

thanks again Ambi - very exciting

[ambi]

Originally Posted by TonE

Tried in actions.lua

DeleteItem = '_S&M_DELTAKEANDFILE2'

gives error in mapper_d.lua:
actions.lua:58: bad argument #1 to 'Main_OnCommand' (number expected, got string)

Yeah, you need to wrap it in externalAction.
See this example in actions.lua:
SWS_RenameCurrentTrack = externalAction('_XENAKIOS_RENAMETRAXDLG')

You might need to download a new version of the tool, since I added this earlier today.

[ambi]

Originally Posted by semiquaver

and some FRs !

I'd love to see vims '.' for repeat implemented

and 'q' for macro recording

...I'm also wondering about gestures

vim uses an action-gesture-number system -

so maybe the we want something like

a add
d delete
g nudge

m marker
i item
t track
g gridline
p env point
e envelope

?

Yeah, I will most certainly be slowly stealing features from vim, such as macro recording and repetition of last action.

I'm not sure what you mean by gestures, but maybe you mean text objects? Like diw for "Delete inner word". I might be doing something like that, but I'm not sure what it would translate to in Reaper. I'll think about it.

In general, the point of this was to supply a framework for people to set up their own mappings easier, not primarily supporting any well-designed or standardized mappings myself. But some good defaults will probably slowly develop if people start using it and share.

[ambi]

Originally Posted by semiquaver

yep working!

thought: is it possible to have mode changes that persist?

so: ma -> next marker

then

a would add marker...

I've thought about having sub-modes, similar to Emacs major modes, which would essentially be like namespaces of mappings. I think this could supply what you're describing.

[ambi]

So, since there seems to be some interest for this, I've made an effort to improve the user experience and fix some initial mistakes.
Firstly, url has changed to: https://github.com/ggVGc/vimper

Major changes:
* Config file has moved to REAPER/vimper_bindings.lua. You need to copy example_bindings.lua there, or make your own.

* Key map updated, and fixed. I made some errors earlier, making it impossible to actually delete the mappings added by vimper. Sorry about this. I strongly advise you to revert to your old reaper-kb.ini file, or edit it by hand to remove anything related to vimper. Then import the new keys.ReaperKeyMap.

* Command repetition added, default binding is '.' like in vim.

* It's now possible to map alt, ctrl and mod(windows key) combinations.

[ambi]

Originally Posted by TonE

Tried new version, imported keys.ReaperKeyMap, is there any reason why ctrl_a is mapped to Win+A instead of Ctrl+A? Same for all other keys. Bug or other reason?

This sounds like an error, but might be a difference in keymaps between OSX and Windows.

Originally Posted by TonE

I actually like it this way more as bindings do not overlap with standard Reaper bindings which use Ctrl! So perfect. You can have both, old, normal Ctrl+.. bindings of Reapler, plus the new vimper bindings, where Ctrl is replaced with Win. Very practical.

Well, I was thinking about supplying different keymaps for people to choose which combinations they want vimper to handle. But I decided against it. The way I see it, if you use vimper, you want to do all your mapping in vimper_mappings.lua. Not some in the actions editor, and some in vimper.
So, for any ctrl/alt/mod combinarions you have currently, I'd advise to add the to your vimper config instead like ['<alt>x'] = runAction(SomeAction).
This will be much easier to edit, and you'll have everything in the same place.

[semiquaver]

thanks for the '.' !

thought: a binding feature might be useful - what if you could select actions using a dynamic menu, select a key to bind the action to, and the binding is appended to Vimper_bindings.lua ?

[semiquaver]

And @TonE re: macro recording, I prefer the vim style:

qa, qb etc start recording macro a,b,c
q stop recording
@a @b @c trigger macro a, b, c etc
@@ replay last macro

[ambi]

I've made some updates. Numpad and some more keys are supported now(this is just a matter of me slowly adding them to the key generator script, and it's just tedious so I only do what I feel is necessary for now).

I've now also added the concept of "contexts", which has changed the format of vimper_mappings.lua slightly. See here, https://github.com/ggVGc/vimper/blob...e_bindings.lua

The reason for this is that reaper has different mapping modes for Main, MIDIEditor etc. The new keys.ReaperKeyMap needs to be imported again to enable the bindings in the midi editor too.

[semiquaver]

Thanks for the update!

... and don't forget to start a new thread where folks can find the project in the top post when you're ready...

[Luster]

+1 for the FR!

Would be a killer feature for the action heavy REAPER.

[Luster]

Ok. I tried vimper but TBH it has some major drawbacks:

I loose all my current short-cuts. No chance for a soft transition. Of course I can set up all the old short-cuts into the text files.

The interface or the lack of any. Yeah, I know. Text files and scripts are very powerful and can be elegant but this isn't a Linux system admin forum. I understand (partly) how vimper works but to just set up some new short-cuts, e.g. to integrate BBPlay/Stop+, it's not only about adding one new line. And this tasks shouldn't take time or any thinking - like adding a new short-cut in the actionslist.

Don't get me wrong. My biggest respect for this work. But IMHO the FR is still relevant.

[Coachz]

I deleted all my shortcuts a few years ago and started from scratch. When adding in the Windows key to combinations like Windows+Alt+F5 I have plenty of shortcuts.

[Coachz]

Originally Posted by TonE

I have a tip for you, in case you do not do it already. Press win+alt using only a single finger, putting your finger in the middle of those two keys, like pianists do sometimes with their thumb. Same trick you could apply to win+control, you only need to slide your finger a little to the left.

Luster, then you can wait.

Great tip ! Thanks.