Structured Keywords - Keyboard Shortcut Enhancements

[Stephane Lacelle]

Hi-

I do all my keyboarding via Structured Keyword panel and Controlled Vocabulary. Love it.

Could use one extra keyboard shortcut in the panel to speed things up. Here's my workflow:

• Opt-Cmd K to get to Structured Keywords - quick.
• Start typing to find substring, hit return - boom, my path is created and ready to be applied - awesome.
• Here's the rub - from there, I have to reach out for the mouse and click "Add path" to add to collection and then Cmd-A to "Add collection to selected" or click "Add path to selected"
• It'd be nice to have a keyboard shortcut that would add path to selected.
• Or... a keyboard shortcut to add path to collection. I could then type Cmd-A to apply collection to selected.
• Or... a modifier key that would modify the "Apply collection to selected" behavior to "Apply path to selected behavior"

Makes sense?

Pretty sure the answer will be "MacOS limits us in our ability to assign shortcuts to modeless (panel) windows". But I have to ask.

Thanks team PM.

[Kirk Baker]

Stephane,

Yes, makes sense.

It is hard to find new keyboard shortcuts that work for utility panels.  Check out the next build for some improvements.

-Kirk

[Stephane Lacelle]

Thanks Kirk - appreciate the quick feedback - will be paying attention to the upcoming releases.

As a fellow software engineer, your work (and the rest of the team) is pretty spectacular. Hope you realize that you're leaving a substantial body of work as legacy here - one focused on making photogs' life better of course, but from a software engineering standpoint, a superb case study in optimization, scalability, algorithmic and resource efficiencies. And that's hard.

[Kirk Baker]

Thanks Kirk - appreciate the quick feedback - will be paying attention to the upcoming releases.

As a fellow software engineer, your work (and the rest of the team) is pretty spectacular. Hope you realize that you're leaving a substantial body of work as legacy here - one focused on making photogs' life better of course, but from a software engineering standpoint, a superb case study in optimization, scalability, algorithmic and resource efficiencies. And that's hard.

Thank you, Stephane.

Photo Mechanic (and Plus) have been very challenging apps to create and maintain.

-Kirk

[Stephane Lacelle]

Hi all -

Downloaded build 6375 this morning and Structured Keywords now has new keyboard shortcuts that speed things up significantly when you're keyboarding your images.

Quick summary of the new shortcuts:

• Opt-Cmd K to get to Structured Keywords
• Start typing your keyword in the substring field, hit return - your path field is automatically filled with all the structured keywords
• Shift Tab to go back to the substring field. Type something else and the path will continue building up.
• Repeat this process until you're done.
  
• From there, you can either Opt-Cmd C to copy the path to the collection or Opt-Cmd P to apply the built-up path to the selected images.

The Opt-Cmd-C Opt-Cmd-P are new in this build. Kirk and team also added more keyword shortcuts to the panel - depending on your workflow, you can apply right most keyword to selected images Alt-Shift-Cmd-C.

No more mousing around... very, very, very quick. Quicker would be to not have to hit Shift Tab to get back to the substring field and have the cursor remain in the substring field. But I'm being picky.

Thanks team PM.

[martin.o]

I work with both Windows and Mac and had to realize that the shortcuts described here are only available on the Mac. My interest is to eliminate the mouse as much as possible and to apply structured keywords and paths as efficiently as possible. The proposal I have would not only speed up the process further, but also be intuitive on both Win/Mac.

With the help of a modifier key, things could be boosted significantly. Ideally, I would have the following workflow:

1. [Ctrl/Shift/K] to launch the structured keywords menu. Sweet.
2. [Tab] to get to the search field. (Ideally the curser is already there and the tab is not needed)
3. First keyword search, followed by [enter]
   3a. If the search returs multiple results, select correct keyword with arrow keys and confirm with [enter]
   3b. If the keyword/path is correct, [shift/enter] to apply the chosen keyword/path to selected image(s)
4. Repeat as needed.

This would mean the following changes:

A) Modifier key option to change behavior of [enter] after search (enter = search, shift/enter = apply) (option/enter on the Mac)
B) Optional: Pulldown menu to choose the functionality of the modifier key option (apply path or keyword or collection).
C) Optional: [enter] option to select the correct keyword if multiple apply to the search term. Currently it's only possible with a double-click using the mouse. Also needs two down arrow clicks to select the frist. Why?
D) Optional: Eliminate the need to hit [Tab] to get to the search field. Launching structured keywords should have the curser right there. Let users type right away.

Does this make sense?

Thank you for considering / commenting.

Martin