Mouse Only Menus? Really? (Please ignore duplicate, Use this thread only))

Has anyone discovered a way to access the menus at the top of the Track View? Without using a mouse to open them? I have tried without success to create keyboard shortcuts, but these menus seem special in some way as they cannot be bound. I notice that the items in the menus have selection keys underlined, which is not much use it you MUST use a mouse to open them.
 
Frustrated,
 
James

james@blessingstead.com


Has anyone discovered a way to access the menus at the top of the Track View? Without using a mouse to open them? I have tried without success to create keyboard shortcuts, but these menus seem special in some way as they cannot be bound. I notice that the items in the menus have selection keys underlined, which is not much use it you MUST use a mouse to open them.
 
Frustrated,
 
James

If sonar is in focus ALT+F, ALT+E, ALT+I, ALT+P, ALT+J, ALT+U, ALT+W, ALT+H

I apologize again for poking some fun at your duplicate post.

I cruised through the doc for X2 and I also do not see what key binding would activate the drop down for example Tracks, at the top of the Track Pane.  Once the drop down is there, each option seems to have a shortcut key - hide a track etc., but I too wonder how one would get that Tracks drop down to occur without clicking on it with your mouse.  I always just click on it with the mouse and to be honest, I just use the mouse for whatever else I am doing while there, since I already used it to open the drop down.

I have no intention at this time of the steep learning curve I would have at learning bunches of key bindings, and while there might be one to do that, I will likely not ever know it.

Back in 8.5.3, the key bindings were an art form, and watching an accomplished engineer buzz through them always amazed me.

Then again, I still think the 3 Stooges are pretty funny.

Good luck on your quest.

Bob Bone

This is one of the times when jumping to conclusions can lead to embarrassment.

The OP had a good question that was dismissed and to a degree ridiculed.

There is a fundamental problem though. CW tried to have the same menu setup on every child window. I'm sure it was never intended that keyboard control would apply to them. If you have the PRV open in the dock and are viewing the TV which menu should open? One could say well its the one that has focus. But then if you are not using a mouse how then can one change focus? Sure it can be done with a keyboard and I think the reason the items in the menu are keybound is we still have keyboard control of those functions. The menu on the other hand may not need that.  

I don't think CW ever thought X1/X2 would be used without a mouse or some other pointing device anymore than they thought it would be used without an audio interface of some sort. 

John


This is one of the times when jumping to conclusions can lead to embarrassment.

The OP had a good question that was dismissed and to a degree ridiculed.

There is a fundamental problem though. CW tried to have the same menu setup on every child window. I'm sure it was never intended that keyboard control would apply to them. If you have the PRV open in the dock and are viewing the TV which menu should open? One could say well its the one that has focus. But then if you are not using a mouse how then can one change focus? Sure it can be done with a keyboard and I think the reason the items in the menu are keybound is we still have keyboard control of those functions. The menu on the other hand may not need that.  

I don't think CW ever thought X1/X2 would be used without a mouse or some other pointing device anymore than they thought it would be used without an audio interface of some sort. 

Yeah, in this respect Sonar is a bit quirky... I mean, try clicking around on a console fader....you can get a dozen different pop-ups depending on where exactly you happen to click within that fader. Conventional design would be to to have something like a master popup for the control - and then just maybe, just maybe a few obvious (to the non-familiar user) specializations to would be be added to or rather, merged with that popup depending on obvious sub-targets, like the meter, i.e. But Sonar's pop-ups do not to seem use a layered menu-merging mechanism. A good example of a layer pop-up type of design would be Sony's Acid Pro or Vegas - if you've ever used those programs.


Sonar seems to act as if all it pop-ups were hand assigned to the windows that make up a control, rather than an automatic windowing system. Who knows, maybe they'll change it whenever they decide to go with a new code base...

It was just easy pickings to mess with you for the duplicate post.

Congrats on having sight now, and for getting past our momentary collective immaturity and insensitivity to a valid question.

I can tell you that there was an amazing amount of thought and work that they put into the complete redesign of the user interface between 8.5.3 and X1.  There are soooo many functions to cram on to a screen that every pixel of real estate must have been agonized over during all of that.

All in all, the X1 changes opened up Sonar to a much wider market, and have continued with X2 - which got a 9 out of 10 in I think Music Magazine in their Dec issue.

Submit it as a feature request, clearly by having underlined shortcut keys within each of those Track Pane tabs (Views, Tracks, Clips, etc.) that they mean for people to be able to skip the mouse once in there, maybe they just didn't realize that there was no non-mousey way to get to those drop downs.

Bob Bone

Accessibility should never be optional or ignored, and a mouse should never be considered an only input option. Those of us fortunate to have all of our faculties and motor control need to be reminded that more than 10% of our population has a disability. Application design - like web design - needs to accommodate. It's the right thing to do.

KEv