Inclusion of Screen-cast Key Status Functionality #76666

Adding this task as there has been an add-on developed for this,
while it needs changes to be acceptable, this task calls into question the use in having this functionality in Blender at all.

Adding this functionality either requires newly developed API's to hook into event handling, or to be built into Blender it's self,

Creating this task to check if this is functionality that would be accepted.

Pros

Everyone can access the functionality as part of Blender.

Cons

More code to update & maintain.
Having to maintain a key-overlay on top of everything else may cause issues or fail in some cases.
Tutorials using this wont work well if they involve any applications besides Blender.

See: blender/blender-addons#51419 (Screencast Keys Addon: Return to Addons release 2.79), blender/blender-addons#76611 (Screencast Key Status Add-on)

Changed status from 'Needs Triage' to: 'Confirmed'

Added subscriber: @ideasman42

Added subscriber: @WilliamReynish

IMO this is fine as an addon. The addon adds a panel in the Sidebar which we wouldn’t want by default, and really this sort of thing isn’t core to creating 3D content. Other apps typically don’t include this kind of thing, and external apps exist for screen recording which both record and display keys across all applications used.

If it was only a matter of having the add-on as an optional component, that could be OK (assuming bugs references from blender/blender-addons#51419 are resolved).

The issue is there is extra development involved to support this, which raises the question if this is worth spending time on.

Added subscriber: @nutti

I think adding API would be better than adding Screencast Keys to Blender itself.
Screencast Keys add-on targets to the user who make tutorials, which is not essential to create contents as mentioned before.
Switching between enable and disable is one of the benefit for add-on.
Furthermore, there will be spaces to tweak an UI if this feature is left as add-on for some advance users.

Changed status from 'Confirmed' to: 'Archived'

After discussion, we are closing this topic. While useful for some folks, we don't think it's worth the time to include this in Blender's core. It's outside the main scope of what Blender's core feature set should be focused on.

Understood. Thanks for sparing time for this.

@nutti, to be clear, we're not against this in principle, however supporting this involves writing new API's.

If someone is interested to do this, it could be included in Blender. However the API should not introduce too much complexity & maintenance-overhead into existing code.

Thanks for your follow up comments.
Yes, I understood the range of development for this function and the directions.
For now, I think it may be better to continue hosting this function as the external add-on in my repository.

BTW, writing & contribution of new APIs by non-committer are welcomed?
I do not know well the process of development about Blender's C code.

New API's by non-committers is fine.

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Inclusion of Screen-cast Key Status Functionality #76666

Pros

Cons