Problems with shortcuts on non-English keyboards

I know this topic has been discussed many time already and it looks like customizable keyboard shortcuts are not high on the priority list… But I would like to hear tips and tricks from people who are using Sonic Pi with non-English keyboard layouts. I’m using a Finnish keyboard myself and for me it’s impossible to use these shortcuts (just to name a few).

M-{ - Switch buffer to the left
M-} - Switch buffer to the right
M-/ - Comment/Uncomment current line or selection

There are lots of keyboard layouts where some characters like / are not directly accessible (I need to use shift + 7 for that for example). Have you figured out ways to get around these issues?

Perhaps you can uncomment with “#” shortcut SHIFT+3 on my European keyboard

# Uncomment with "#" with shift+3
play 40

Sure, commenting line by line (#) works but M-/ would be much more useful for live coding as you can quickly comment/uncomment whole loops at a time. But I guess I need to continue using old tricks like adding stop of some syntax error in the live loop to quickly stop it from playing.

Configurable keyboard shortcuts would solve all of this but I haven’t really had a look at the Sonic Pi codebase so I have no idea how hard it would be to implement. I guess it must be tricky because the feature is still missing after all these years.

I’ve been using a Belgian azerty layout forever, so I had a lot of issues myself with shortcuts. Then being on Linux instead of a Mac I had to use alt-r and alt-s instead of cmd-r and cmd-s for years but that got fixed only recently.

Here is what I have been doing:

  • not using shortcuts (sucks)
  • going into the Sonic Pi code myself to change the shortcuts in the source and then compiling Sonic Pi myself (setting this up sucks a lot but then it actually works really well)
  • switching to Querty layout when using Sonic Pi (there is a hotkey on Linux and Windows to switch keyboard layouts, you need to enable the ones you want first and then you need to get used to switching between layouts all the time)
  • currently: switched to Querty layout completely. Bought an external Querty keyboard to use on my laptops and will be buying laptops with Querty layout in the future. I managed to buy an old Macbook for cheap and running Sonic Pi on a Macbook feels like it is in it’s “native” ecosystem, like no weird finger stretching for shortcuts and everything just works.

To all my fellow non-querty users, the entire world is using querty layout, support is getting better but every time I have to remap wasd in a game I feel it’s 1990 again where I had to play with my fingers in weird positions. I made the switch to querty and so far I can only say that I have been noticing that EVERY piece of software is written with querty in mind. Not even in mind, it’s like it’s a given that’s not even worth spending a thought on. I’m a programmer by trade and an amateur musician and every piece of software I use I now notice feels more natural on querty, there is no other way to describe it.

You might be interested to know that I released v5 beta 1 over in Patreon which includes a completely overhauled shortcut system - including means to define your own shortcuts.

https://www.patreon.com/posts/sonic-pi-v5-beta-114418894?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

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