Feature request(?): more Keyboard shortcuts to switch focus

[recook]

Hi,

i do prefer keyboard shortcuts to moving my hand away from the keyboard to search for the mouse, trying to target what i want and click, an moving ist back to the keyboard.

Are there shortcuts to switch the focus to

• the book view,
• the code view or
• the preview?

If not, could there please be those in future?

[DiapDealer]

Originally Posted by recook

Hi,

i do prefer keyboard shortcuts to moving my hand away from the keyboard to search for the mouse, trying to target what i want and click, an moving ist back to the keyboard.

Are there shortcuts to switch the focus to

• the book view,
• the code view or
• the preview?

If not, could there please be those in future?

There is no more Book View

[KevinH]

Try tab. Or Cntrl tab to move among multiple focus points

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by recook

i do prefer keyboard shortcuts to moving my hand away from the keyboard to search for the mouse, . . .

Me too.

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

There is no more Book View

Maybe the OP meant Book browser.

Originally Posted by KevinH

Try tab. Or Cntrl tab to move among multiple focus points

On Windows: Tab and Shift+Tab in CV inserts a Tab, in the wrong place it will generate an error. Ctrl/Alt/Winkey Tab are owned by Windows.

Hint: at my request the calibre main GUI includes user settable shortcuts to set focus to some of its panels, e.g Book list (Ctrl+Alt+T), Tag browser (Ctrl+Alt+T), Quickview (Ctrl+Alt+Q) - those are my shortcut sequences.

There is nothing similar in its editor… but I rarely use its editing functions, only use its spellchecker and a couple of its reports.

BR

[KevinH]

There are already keyboard shortcuts for closing a tab, shifting between tabs in CodeView, as well as Previous File and Next File in BookBrowser, and Preview is synced to your location in CodeView and does not accept input focus.

And shift tab will still move focus within a window.

[KevinH]

In addition, I can use the MainWindow setTabOrder method to allow repeated use of Shift+Tab or Ctrl+Tab to cycle focus through each QDockWidget.

I will give that a try.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by KevinH

In addition, I can use the MainWindow setTabOrder method to allow repeated use of Shift+Tab or Ctrl+Tab to cycle focus through each QDockWidget.

I will give that a try.

That would work, my tree and dual-pane file manager works that way with unmodified Tab. If possible try to decorate the panel that has kb focus with something distinctive - e.g. blink its title. I raise it because its something the calibre GUI lacks. My file manager uses a settable background colour for inactive panels… but that wouldn't work in this instance.

Aside: Sigil's Plugins and Checkpoint menubar items don't appear to have accelerator keys.

BR

[KevinH]

You can assign keyboard shortcuts for up to 10 plugins. And yes you can assign a keyboard shortcut to Commit/CheckPoint and the other checkpoint tools as well.

In addition, using the "shift tab" I can already cycle through 15 major sub windows of the MainWindow.

This includes BookBrowser, TabManager, ValidationResults, PreviewWindow, ClipsWindow, TableOfContents, FindReplace (and all of its subfields), ZoomBar, StatusBar and etc.

So I am not sure what if anything needs to be done.

[BeckyEbook]

For the record, because I know you know this: Accelerator keys = keys to access by left Alt key (underline letters).
Indeed, Plugins and Checkpoints do not have letters assigned to the keys, so it is not possible to easily 'jump' into these menus. This can be lived with, but for orthodox keyboard shortcut lovers it is probably a problem.

[DiapDealer]

Ah, yes. We probably should assign something there. But there's so many menus that assigning anything remotely pertinent/mnemonic becomes a challenge.

[KevinH]

But you can set the shortcut for those Keyboard Shortcuts in Sigil Preferences:

See:

- Compare Epub against Previous Checkpoint
- Create Checkpoint for Epub
- Edit Checkpoint Descriptions
- Manage Checkpoint Repositories

In fact you can set shortcuts for all of the registered commands in Sigil. Default ones are not set because there simply are not enough keys shortcuts free.

See the long list of registered commands that shortcuts can be assigned to in Sigil/src/MainUI/MainWindow.cpp starting here and going to line 6163

https://github.com/Sigil-Ebook/Sigil...ndow.cpp#L5990

[KevinH]

I admit I have no idea why you are differentiating between keyboard shortcuts and keyboard accelerators? Why does that matter if you can go directly to the thing you want based on your own assigned shortcut.

In fact on MacOS those menu items do *not* have underlines. Only specific items in that menu are given default shortcuts.

Perhaps this is a Windows thing I am unfamiliar with?

[BeckyEbook]

Probably yes. I've been using these shortcuts with the left Alt (with the left, because in Poland we have AltGr, so the right Alt is used to get diacritics and other special characters) for over 30 years.
It's quite useful, and I find it hard to change my habits

I don't even mention the many occasions when I was able to do something without a mouse and younger people looked at it as if it was witchcraft.

[KevinH]

Okay, did find out that Ctrl-F2 will bring focus up to the Mac menubar and then arrow keys can be used to select and run any menu item. So using Accelerators is not something done on macOS but Shortcuts are.

So to allow you to use the left Alt to get to a specific menu item, must we give each menu item itself its own underlined character?

Must those characters be universally unique across all menus or can they be unique only within a sub menu?

If the latter we could give C to Checkpoint otherwise C is sued in other places?

[BeckyEbook]

C is used (Ctrl+Alt+C) = Clip Editor, and additionally Alt+C = Count All.

In the meantime, I did a trial run and built a new version of Sigil and I took the test.

Good letters are:
P - &Plugins
K - Chec&kpoints

Changes to the main.ui file was sufficient.