Additional keyboard shortcuts

[nwirew]

All of the actions I'll list here are things that I think would help smooth over some pain points that hamper an otherwise wonderful app if they had dedicated keyboard shortcuts, but the suggested keys are just that - suggestions. I wouldn't mind seeing them bound to other keys if they would work better that way.

Path Edit Tool:

Use arrow keys and a modifier key to traverse points on the current path. Since the arrows and shift are already bound to point movement, this would help to improve my workflow since I wouldn't need to constantly reach for my mouse or awkwardly do the same thing by tabbing through HTML elements in the sidebar.

Ctrl + arrow keys:

• Down: Select previous path point
• Up: Select next path point
• Left: Toggle focus between path point and handle 1
• Right: Toggle focus between path point and handle 2

Other nice-to-haves to minimize time spent switching between mouse and keyboard:

Ctrl + enter: Select path point 1. (Or maybe ctrl + backslash, enter might be too close to the up arrow key and be annoying to hit by accident)
Ctrl + comma, ctrl + period: Toggle checkboxes for "Use handle 1" and "Use handle 2" for the current path point.

Square brackets: Navigate to previous or next glyph.
Semicolon, apostrophe: Select previous and next paths in the glyph.
Comma, period: Cycle left or right through the list of handle types for the current path point.

X, Y: Lock that axis for the current point and its handles.
R: Round position values for the current point and its handles.

Shift + X, shift + Y: Lock that axis for only the current point or handle.
Shift + R: Round position values for only the current point or handle.

Add Path Point and New Path tools:

Currently the New Path tool seems to always add points without handles, and the Add Path Point tool seems to do the opposite. I think it'd be nice to have consistent behavior between both of them, along with the option to choose whether or not the point is created with handles.

Click: Add a path point with handles.
Ctrl + click: Add a path point without handles.

Workspace

D, F, G, H: Select new rectangle, new oval, new path, and add path point tools.

Current Shortcuts

Not sure if I should open a separate issue for it, but I would also appreciate if the current keyboard shortcuts worked globally - for example, the arrow keys currently work immediately after selecting a path point, but if you move the mouse outside of the canvas workspace they do nothing until the mouse returns to the canvas; you can even hold down an arrow key and repeatedly move the mouse in and out of the canvas to affect movement.

[mattlag]

These are great suggestions! It's great timing too, I'm halfway through implementing a v2.6, which focuses on advanced path and path point actions. Adding in way more keyboard shortcuts is on the list, so I will definitely put these on the list for consideration.

I'm fine making up new keyboard shortcuts, but wherever possible, I'd like to be similar to other vector design programs' keyboard shortcuts. Just out of curiosity, are these suggestions just off the top of your head? Or are you pulling some of them from some other app (Illustrator, Figma, etc...) that you are also familiar with?

[nwirew]

Definitely not pulled from another app! I don't do a ton of work at all with vector graphics - usually it's either just Glyphr, or raw SVG markup by hand every once in a while. The suggestions for X, Y, and R were basically just to put something out there, but the others I tried to pick based on some kind of convenience for how Glyphr already works (i.e. D, F, G, and H are near B and V for the other tools; and having new point functions bound to the arrow keys, and others nearby, means you can do just about every kind of point manipulation you need by using just them).

Happy to hear about the plans for 2.6 btw - I'll be looking forward to it!