Comment by Doxin | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Doxin | Hacker News Reader

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Blender is a fairly good example of visual software usable with a keyboard only. Especially in older versions there were a lot of functions you couldn't even get to with a mouse. These days everything has a way to get to it from both the mouse and keyboard.

Turns out that an interface like that is really hard to learn but also really fast once you do. Extruding a face along the normal is as easy as getting it selected somehow (which I do with the mouse, but there's plenty of keyboard based selection tools too) and hitting e, followed by z twice, and then either entering a distance on the keyboard or moving the mouse to move it a bit. Personally I love the interplay between keyboard and mouse: you can pick whichever method is most effective. For selecting specific things or moving stuff until it looks right you use the mouse, for selecting in bulk or moving stuff specific distances you use the keyboard. Or a combination. Whichever is convenient.

So I think if you can solve the discoverability problem of keyboard shortcuts it'd be a real productivity boost for power users.

Blender is a great piece of software and I love it but speaking of the keyboard shortcuts in Blender, one thing that annoys me about it is the reliance on the numpad for some of the keyboard shortcuts I would like to use. The reason those shortcuts annoy me is that I don’t have a numpad, so I am unable to use them.

But you could easily acquire one. I'd imagine most physical keyboards do have numpads?

I wouldn't say most. I rarely come across laptops that support a numpad for example.

External number pads are cheap. If someone's spending enough time using programs for which a number pad would be very helpful, it's probably worth the few dollars they cost and the tiny amount of space they take up (similar to a normal-size corded mouse—slightly larger footprint, but thinner)

Not OP, but I don't have a numpad amongst my keyboards. As my computing experience changed, I had to get used to touchtyping numbers above the letters; previously, I had almost always used the numpad.

My laptop has no number pad. I use it when I want a portable keyboard device, so an external keyboard would be irrelevant and unnecessary. Buying a device with a numpad built in would be a compromise that makes the built in keyboard even less useful, due to its non-centred location - in the unlikely event that everything else was identical.

My external keyboards have no numpad. They're ergonomic keyboards. One built for size, the other built uncompromisingly ergonomically. Ergonomic design actually speaks against number pads, since it means you have to extend you arm further to reach the mouse, and an uncompromised ergonomic design are wider than a regular keyboard since you want more separation between the two hands - so the number pad becomes an even bigger issue.

I've sometimes thought about buying an external numpad. But so far I neevr have.

> Ergonomic design actually speaks against number pads, since it means you have to extend you arm further to reach the mouse

I don’t have this problem with my Kinesis Advantage, since the numpad is embedded in the main keyboard (using a mode shift/switch to access, which I have mapped to a foot pedal)

> Ergonomic design actually speaks against number pads

Either move the mouse or the number pad to your left hand. I've left moused in the office for years (Yahoo! ergo team preached it when I joined), and it took a bit of getting used to, and limits your mouse choices, but it's actually pretty nice sometimes to be able to have one hand on the mouse and the other on the number pad. Mousing with one hand in the office and the other hand at home can help with overuse injuries too (although, using good techniques is much better for that). Of course, that still doesn't get you a numberpad on a reasonably sized laptops, but laptop keyboards are an ergo nightmare anyway, reaching over today's enormous touchpads is awful.

Real keyboards do, but there are far fewer of us with proper full-size IBM-style keyboards than laptops that are cut down to 13-15 inches and have more-or-less eccentric layouts.

Emulate numpad+emulate 3 button mouse (IIRC)

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/124/how-to-emula...

True, but you can turn on "numpad emulation" and then use the normal number keys as substitute. It's a weak substitute though, The whole point of the numpad is that it makes those shortcuts work somewhat as directional keys, which is lost when using the normal number keys.

Additionally I don't think it allows you to substitute a period for the numpad period key which is a rather important button in day-to-day blender usage. Of course you can re-map any key you like, but it'd be nice to have it set up right by default.

EDIT: and of course under a recent blender version (2.5+) there's the search box if you really don't want to use your mouse ;)

No longer an issue with the latest major release. All views and manipulations can be performed just like your favorite other 3D softwares.

Also, I bought a separate mechanical 10key years ago and never looked back. It's a fantastic addition to any 40-60%.

My laptop has no built-in numpad. Yet I use all the Blender numpad related keymappings and do all my graphics using a mouse / pen. I've done this at airport lounges without issues. USB numpads aren't that rare. Neither are mice.

Blender is a perfect example of the ideal compromise between "takes 10 clicks to do anything" and "takes 10 days to learn to do anything".

You can start in blender ploddingly wandering though the gui as you discover features and then streamline your workflow with the keyboard shortcuts as you go. As you do so, it feels a lot like leveling up in a particularly good game.

Very few pieces of software currently do this well these days. Its a breath of fresh air. Especially v2.8.

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