Give better feedback on regulator creation through shortcuts

Vectornaut commented

2026-05-30 02:27:50 +00:00

Member

As of pull request #138, you can use a keyboard shortcut to request the creation of an inversive distance regulator, but you don't get clear feedback on the result. If creation succeeds, you'll only see the new regulator appear if one of its subjects has its regulator list open in the outline view. If creation fails—for example, because you didn't have the right number of subjects selected—it fails silently and without explanation.

When you use a keyboard shortcut to to request the creation of a regulator, you should get a clear indication of whether the creation succeeded, and an explanation if it didn't succeed. This feedback shouldn't depend on a particular view, like the outline or the command prompt, being visible.

While this issue focuses on keyboard shortcuts, addressing it could help us improve other affordances for creating regulators. For example, at times when the keyboard shortcut that creates a regulator will fail, the button that creates the same regulator should be disabled. The failure feedback provided by the shortcut could also be used to explain why the button is disabled.

As of pull request #138, you can use a keyboard shortcut to request the creation of an inversive distance regulator, but you don't get clear feedback on the result. If creation succeeds, you'll only see the new regulator appear if one of its subjects has its regulator list open in the outline view. If creation fails—for example, because you didn't have the right number of subjects selected—it fails silently and without explanation. When you use a keyboard shortcut to to request the creation of a regulator, you should get a clear indication of whether the creation succeeded, and an explanation if it didn't succeed. This feedback shouldn't depend on a particular view, like the outline or the command prompt, being visible. While this issue focuses on keyboard shortcuts, addressing it could help us improve other affordances for creating regulators. For example, at times when the keyboard shortcut that creates a regulator will fail, the button that creates the same regulator should be disabled. The failure feedback provided by the shortcut could also be used to explain why the button is disabled.

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2026-05-30 02:27:50 +00:00

Vectornaut referenced this issue

2026-05-30 02:35:21 +00:00

feat: Introduce an action system and command language #138

glen commented

2026-05-30 16:27:25 +00:00

Owner

As also noted in the wiki, there's a general keyboard interface principle of which this is an instance: anything that's "supposed" to do something needs to provide some indication that there was at least an attempt to do something, to differentiate such actions from events that could possibly be connected to an action (like an unbound key) but actually have no such behavior.

As also noted in the [wiki](https://code.studioinfinity.org/StudioInfinity/dyna3/wiki/Interface#feedback), there's a general keyboard interface principle of which this is an instance: anything that's "supposed" to do something needs to provide some indication that there was at least an attempt to do something, to differentiate such actions from events that could possibly be connected to an action (like an unbound key) but actually have no such behavior.

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Give better feedback on regulator creation through shortcuts #143