Make shortcuts for panels 1 / 2 be absolute (instead of relative)

Archive Feature Requests
#1

if the shortcuts were absolute, it doesn’t matter which panel is currently active, you always know where the content will come up. So opening from CTRL+P would always open on left, and from SHIFT+CTRL+P would always open on right (same for clicking/SHIFT+clicking from sidebar))

Currently its relative - ie., you add SHIFT when using shortcuts or clicking to open a reference in the other panel.

However very often I don’t really know which panel is active (where I last left the cursor). So I need to first click on a panel (or spend some time checking where the cursor is), and then perform the action.

#2

Interesting idea!

Two questions - do you see a workaround for either of these?

  1. It would be best for the behavior to be the same for clicking on bullets / Rem References. Here, the current active pane is “obvious”, so the mental step of “do I want it in this pane or the other pane” seems more sensible.
  2. We’re eventually going to offer >2 panes; not sure how this behavior would fit into this.

Maybe we could instead offer a different shortcut for this? Or maybe this just requires a larger rethink of the multiple-panes system…

2 Likes
#3

For now, have the left pane always respond to non-shift keys and clicks, the right to shift? After infinite panes (see also Arbitrary number of panes and the ability to arrange them freely ), have shift commands open a new pane always and regular ones apply to the one the caret is in?

#4

For 1: Yeah, I agree that for bullet clicks the current behaviour is best (click should open in same panel, SHIFT in the other). What I’m suggesting is an alternative behaviour for the situations in which it’s not clear (from search and from sidebar).

For 2: Lot’s of variables to consider here… Here’s an initial suggestion:

One panel would always need to be set as the “Primary” one. By default, its the one on the left (so if a user doesn’t want to bother with that, its always clear which is primary).

Then:

When opening a reference from Search or sidebar
Click: opens on primary document
CTRL+SHIFT+click: open in a new panel
SHIFT+click: if there’s only one panel, behave same as CTRL+SHIFT+click; if two, open in the non-primary panel

When opening from clicking on a bullet
Click: open in same panel
CTRL+SHIFT+click: opens in a new panel
SHIFT+click: if one panel, same as above; if two, open in the other panel.

Regardless of the situation, if there are more than two panels, maybe open in the one most recently interacted with? (alternatively, allow defining a Secondary panel. But that might be too messy)

The shortcuts for creating/opening documents can have similar variations. For example, creating a new document would be ALT+D (opens on primary document), ALT+CTRL+SHIFT+D (new panel) and ALT+SHIFT+D (the other). (could be clumsy)

Would be good to allow users to customize some of the above. At least to flip click with SHIFT+click.

Nice-to-have: be able to just drag a reference into an existing panel to open it there (or in-between them to insert a new one).