I’m 100% in the camp of “RM8 is too slow in data entry without ALL those keyboard shortcuts”.
See also the post: Keyboard shortcuts
I had a fruitless discussion with someone in Tech Support who appeared not to know anything useful and eventually that found its way to Renee and she replied to me on Oct.14: "There are some keyboard shortcuts on the Command Palette. To add a child to a highlighted person use Shift+Ctrl+C. The Command Palette is in the upper right corner of the program next to the Find Everywhere search box. We intend to add more in the future. "
The things in the Command Palette are mostly (so far) about navigating windows, screens, views and tools … NOT about facilitating data entry. So I sent her a list of things I was looking for …
Some examples:
- Selecting the highlighted thing in a list by hitting Enter, not clicking Next or Select
- Always being able to confirm / save / exit a dialog by hitting Alt-O (or something like that) instead of clicking the OK button (you have a FEW of those already)
- Opening the Notes associated with a Fact by hitting Alt-N instead of clicking on a little box/icon
- Opening the Sources associated with a Fact by hitting Alt-S instead of clicking on a little box/icon
- Completing data entry on a Fact and saving it by hitting Alt-V instead of clicking the check mark
- Pasting a copied Source on to a new Fact by hitting Alt-P instead of clicking the Sources icon then Paste Citation then Paste Copy (and a different Alt- for Reusing a Citation)
And other things that RM7 did which greatly sped up the data entry task:
- When a dialog is opened, or a view slides in, preposition the cursor in the most likely data entry field
- When adding a child to a family don’t ask me to sort them by birth date until I have COMPLETED that child (currently it happens too soon since I haven’t usually added the dates to the child, just the name, because I can’t readily add any notes and sources on the add person dialog)
- When I have finished adding a child to a family ask me if I want to add another (like RM7 did), allowing me to say yes and keep going just by hitting Enter in most cases
- When I add a Spouse to a person assume I’ll want to add a marriage Fact (usually true even if you have no date or place for that marriage Fact) – I can always delete it in the rare case
I used to be able to add piles of people with lots of facts for them and with source citations without ever touching the mouse and I got pretty fast at it. Can’t even get close to doing that now. RM8 slows me down a lot.
I hope reintroducing these shortcuts is already on the To Do list and not too far off in the future – or should I wait for version 8.2?