Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Ticket #5610, comment 4


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Timestamp:
Nov 15, 2021, 10:25:18 PM (4 years ago)
Author:
Tom Goddard

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  • Ticket #5610, comment 4

    initial v1  
    1 I don't have a good idea what button combination to use for z translation.  Here are various ideas that don't work well.  1) Hold the Alt/Option key while in move selected models or move atoms mouse mode.  Unfortunately many uses on a laptops use a trackpad and Alt/Option is used to emulate middle mouse click so it would not work with those modes bound to the right mouse button.  Ctrl-key and Command key on Mac have similar problems of conflicting with other uses.   The shift key is used to make translation modes do a rotation and make rotation modes do a translation.  But I don't see any other usable available key to do z-translation.  In Chimera the ctrl key changes the xy translation into a z translation.  Unfortunately in the Qt window toolkit used by ChimeraX holding the ctrl key turns a left mouse click into a right mouse click.  This means we can't distinguish a left and right ctrl click since they all look like right.  But selection is a left-ctrl click and to get that to work we assume right ctrl click is actually left ctrl click on Mac.  The Tk window toolkit used by Chimera did not have this problem which allowed ctrl to be usable for z-translation.  Qt does not support CapsLock or Fn key as a modifiers, so those also are not readily usable.  2) Have a separate z-translate mouse mode.  Could do this but it is inconvenient to use as you would need to switch between translate selected models to z-translate selected models mode using the toolbar or assign some other mouse button to do it using commands -- almost no users would do that so it is not a very useful addition.
     1I don't have a good idea what button combination to use for z translation.  Here are various ideas that don't work well.  1) Hold the Alt/Option key while in move selected models or move atoms mouse mode.  Unfortunately many users on a laptops use a trackpad and Alt/Option is used to emulate middle mouse click so it would not work with those modes bound to the right mouse button.  Ctrl-key and Command key on Mac have similar problems of conflicting with other uses.   The shift key is used to make translation modes do a rotation and make rotation modes do a translation.  But I don't see any other usable available key to do z-translation.  In Chimera the ctrl key changes the xy translation into a z translation.  Unfortunately in the Qt window toolkit used by ChimeraX holding the ctrl key turns a left mouse click into a right mouse click.  This means we can't distinguish a left and right ctrl click since they all look like right.  But selection is a left-ctrl click and to get that to work we assume right ctrl click is actually left ctrl click on Mac.  The Tk window toolkit used by Chimera did not have this problem which allowed ctrl to be usable for z-translation.  Qt does not support CapsLock or Fn key as a modifiers, so those also are not readily usable.  2) Have a separate z-translate mouse mode.  Could do this but it is inconvenient to use as you would need to switch between translate selected models to z-translate selected models mode using the toolbar or assign some other mouse button to do it using commands -- almost no users would do that so it is not a very useful addition.
    22
    33Unfortunately with many users on laptops with only a trackpad the modifier keys are all used.  If you have a suggestion that would make z-translation work well I would like to hear it.