I don’t disagree… The option to have them has been asked for a number of times. I just think it’s probably far too late in the V8 development cycle for this kind of change to be considered. On the Windows side I imagine it would require a lot of plumbing changes, not to mention the explanations of how to set them up and use them in the Help and other documentation.
Hi all -
RH-77352 Restore Alt key shortcuts
-Pascal
So there are two different things being talked about here…
The “unadorned shortcuts” article referenced above - I’ll link it here again for clarity - has this paragraph:
The keyboard shortcuts are not restricted to key combinations with the Command, Option, Shift, or Control keys. As in Adobe Illustrator, you can assign an unadorned letter to a command. For example, you can assign C to the Circle command. Typing C when a command is not active will invoke the Circle command. If you do this, then you will not be able to type any Rhino command that starts with the letter C.
That is definitely different than typing Alt + C
It is currently possible to customize keyboard shortcuts in v7 (mac), wether they use a single letter or letters combined with modifier keys (control, option, command on mac keyboard). This is gone in v8.
The key advantage of such shortcuts is that it is not necessary to press Enter to execute them. Why abuse the enter key if not necessary 
? I’m not sure if such would be called “unadorned shortcuts” or other; that’s not the point. The point is allowing users to customize keyboard commands, hopefully with out needing to constantly use Enter. Always trying to reduce keystrokes while chasing simplicity and efficiency.
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Any good reason why this shouldn’t also work on windows? Always wondered why it doesn’t.
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An idea (a compromise):
How about when a key (c maybe) is pressed longer than a definable short timespan, like 300ms, a command (circle) is invoked directly, without enter/space
(The RMB context menu already works that way.)
Maybe also only if it’s the first letter in the command line, so it’s not so easy to stumble and start a command in the middle of typing.
C
and
Ctrl (Cmd)+C or Alt (Opt)+C
are still two VERY different animals in Rhino.
The first precludes being able to type any further letter to launch other commands which start with “C”.
The second does not.
I’m going to assume that Cmd + Letter still works in MacRhino for things like
Cmd + C = Copy (to clipboard)
Cmd + V = Paste
etc…? If not then that is very wrong.
What about Cmd + J for Join or Cmd + G for Group - do they work?
True, Alt +Letter key combinations do not work in Windows Rhino. There is actually a real reason for this. Since Windows 3.1, Alt +Letter combinations are supposed to be reserved by Windows for activating menus - i.e. typing Alt +F will open the File menu. I do not know if one has the option to change this behavior.
So, pretty much all combinations in Windows Rhino need to start with Ctrl, to which one can add Alt and Shift .
Again, we’re witnessing the collision/fusion of two universes here, how much one can homogenize the experience without causing major upsets to one side or the other is an open question.
thank you Pascal, i still have to add something important. It is not only about enabling ALT + whatever, but also to make other shortcuts possible in general. something very simple like CMD ALT R is currently not possible, you simply can not add anything new and its not in the list.
also to enable the use of letters, symbols again which are not used by commands like , and . and even if one wishes to use letters which are in commands and they decide to route the entire aliases and shortcuts different as long as they can work. that was still possible in v7.
all of these issues combined are what is limiting the use of v8 for mac users so intense. can you please update the tracker to take these regressions into account?
yes that is one of the bigger problems, currently you can not add anything at all, as mentioned you have a predefined list of shortcuts which is by far not complete, making even simple combinations impossible.
like
CMDALTR
Since the keys are pressed simultaneously,
Cmd+Alt+R
is the same as
Alt+Cmd+R
which I guess doesn’t work because nothing with Alt currently works on Mac?
For Windows Rhino one can freely customize the following:
All of the function keys F1 to F12
Ctrl + all of the function keys F1 to F12
Ctrl + Shift + all of the function keys F1 to F12
Ctrl + Alt + all of the function keys F1 to F12
Ctrl + A to Z plus 0 to 9
Ctrl + Shift + A to Z plus 0 to 9
Ctrl + Alt + A to Z plus 0 to 9
One would hope that at some point, MacRhino will have all of these also available to customize. IIRC, the function keys are normally Mac system reserved, but one can change that - although many advise against it. Also many of the Ctrl/Cmd + A to Z shortcuts are also typical “expected” shortcuts both in Mac and Windows, like Ctrl/Cmd + C for Copy etc, so you change them at your own risk.
the idea was that combinations with alt + another key without pressing anything else should work. for instance as i have mentioned way above like alt s which i used for SetObjectDisplayMode shaded for instance.
to be sure that is not misunderstood, that of course would only be a part of the regain since mac was really perfectly customizable. only tab was predestined for subd toggle which now seems to be open for change which is good, just all the rest is suddenly missing 
thanks @brian , i am getting closer to being functional in the beta 8, still a few issues with the shortcuts but generally its beginning to work again.
@Eugen did you test alt shortcuts on windows either?
For me i’d rather just have an additional keystroke to type into the command box. So we retain the single key shortcuts, but if were about to type a string of characters to invoke ‘Scale 1D’ for example, that we just hit an additional keystroke first. Simmilar to how Apple+Space invokes spotlight search. Maybe let us choose that keystroke too? so for example for me i’d maybe choose to type tab and then whatever.
My main gripe with changes like this is why cant they just make it a check box option like ‘retain V7 shortcuts’.
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I just want to add that having the option/alt key for some is nice but quite far away from a complete solution. In V7 it was great because you could map pretty much everything you’ll ever need to keys for which you didn’t need to move your hand but for that I had different things mapped to CMD + D/ CTRL + D/ Option + D and combinations of them. Personally I don’t use any shortcut for which I have to move my whole hand because at that point clicking a button with my mouse is just as fast. Also there are keys which aren’t mappable at all anymore (i.e. “<”, “#”, etc.)
Additionally the new keyboard setting page feels really clunky compared to the old one. I get that things are supposed to be more streamlined but scrolling over 100+ empty keyboard shortcuts to find the ones I actually use instead of a shortlist and a plus button, is a big regression in my opinion.
Some of the F-Keys don’t seem to be actually mappable (i.e. F8 toggles ortho, no matter what I set it too) and some of the old hotkeys combinations still work after I imported the settings (i.e. CTRL + CMD + W for Wireframe)
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i seemed to have missed your reply, i am completely riddled how your comment slipped through
exactly… and no explanation and nobody willing to share a few soothing words like “we are working on something that will give you back the neat and functional shortcut setup system as before”
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@encephalon I agree the way it is now is not very user friendly. I had created this a while back:
RH-79531 Proposal for adding commands to keyboard shortcuts.
As you can see, this one is currently not high priority.
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thanks @Gijs, i mean honestly, thank you for your proactive participation
i am not complaining towards you but i will resume a few more words for some other employers/employees to consider:
the entire change caused a huge amount frustration for quite a few users here distributed all over the discourse. spending a lot of time being frantic and having to deal with messed up, missing shortcuts which still are messed up, still missing, with some of the key figures from mcneel like @brian (pissing me off in pm even more and talking down to me like am an idiot) not even knowing the entirety of what was stripped (because obviously never knew it was implemented) battling for months and months over some less than quarter baked heartless implementation of something that actually was very good before and sufficient, causes me to have twitching eyes because the fact of this actually being true and having no priority is so short-circuiting.
@stevebaer wrote
hopefully it is good enough to keep users productive in V8
hopefully?
having to suddenly bear with something that simply does not work anymore properly, and for the parts that do work it does not work anywhere (convenient) like before. so maybe its not good enough?
Marking as future and we can revisit in 9
holding my breath for an entire major release is simply messed up and is even when something better comes not excusable, which i also doubt since right now its just about bringig it back nearly as good as it was at most and then we should be happy and buy v9 because Rhino is finally good again?
also what does “can” mean here? it should write “will” right now there is a chance that nobody will care about it ever before they retire, maybe i am dissecting words too much here, but after all that happened can i be that far off assuming the worst?
you should clearly understand how much energy the users actually pro actively put into this, all their efforts for somebody pissing you off in pm is absolutely ill.
please stop that nightmare roulette guys
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hi @encephalon
I understand form your response it clearly isn’t. I agree that the way it is implemented currently is a step back in functionality and UX. I don’t know how much work it is to make it work like it did in Rhino 7. I assume it cannot be simply copy-pasted from Rhino 7 to 8 code. Release targets are to be taken with a grain of salt, these can change always (for better or worse) as priorities change.
@curtisw also worked on the shortcuts lately fixing some bugs, so maybe he can chime in as well, to see if we can tune this up in the Rhino 8 life cycle.
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yes i got heated up again, but reading in the tracker that it still is set future i had once again the need to express some of my depreciation for this bold and radical step back.
if at least the search bar could make it into an update in v8, that would make it so much more bearable.
also , for line and . for point or a < > buttons or combinations are still missing is there any word? @curtisw anything you can share here?
Wait, are some people here saying that Rhino for Mac always had single key shortcuts up until now? 
So theoretically, in the past, Mac users were always faster than PC users since they also didn’t have a command line? 