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As a tangent, the single greatest thing about my Lenovo laptop that I was not looking for when I bought it was that it has three physical buttons for the touchpad(or that pointer thing if you use it). I love X11 style middle click paste. So that middle button elevates it to the best feeling laptop I have ever used.

A note on that pointer thing, I don't use it much, instinctively going for the pad and as such sort of dismissed it. Until I was trying to use the laptop in moving vehicle where the pad was useless due to bouncing but the pointer, rock solid. I totally get it now. lesson: Touch screens sort of suck anyway but are really terrible in moving/bouncing vehicles.

by robertoandred1 days ago|

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Laptops have been outselling desktops for decades, and the idea that Apple users are some quirky tiny minority has been false for just as long.

Blender’s UI just makes bad assumptions.

by rmunn1 days ago|

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I prefer larger screens on laptops, so every laptop I've ever owned has had a numpad. Naturally you can't fit a numpad onto a 12" laptop, but USB (or Bluetooth) numpads are available; a quick Amazon search says $10-20 for most of them.

Plus, Blender has an "Emulate Numpad" option that lets you map the numpad controls onto your regular numeric keys (making it harder to use them for their normal purpose, so I wouldn't recommend it unless an external numpad is not an option for some reason). And they have an "Emulate 3 Button Mouse" option, where the middle mouse button can be emulated by holding down Alt while clicking the left mouse button. (Which means that some Alt+LMB shortcuts become unavailable, so again, the best option is to plug in a USB or Bluetooth mouse).

They've thought of it. Their defaults remain the default for a good reason, because the hardware to properly use the default shortcuts is cheap. But they've also accommodated the people who don't want to buy an external numpad or mouse.

by bluefirebrand1 days ago|

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It makes assumptions that people doing serious 3D work are not on a laptop and can afford a keyboard with a numpad.

Those aren't really bad assumptions.

by robertoandred1 days ago|

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They are silly assumptions, especially for an open-source project trying to gain mindshare.

by mghackerlady12 hours ago|

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Realistically, who among blenders target audience doesn't have 3 button mouses or a numpad? Numpads have been standard on desktop keyboards since the 80s, and any mouse sold today can at least kinda do middle click by clicking in the scroll wheel. Even a lot of laptops have numpads, and clever use of multitouch can emulate a middle click.

Mostly unrelated, but jesus christ you people are uberfocused on mindshare without stopping to think about who your product would actually be useful for

by bluefirebrand1 days ago|

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What do you want them to do about it, exactly? 3D artwork is a complex activity that requires a lot of keys to have a useful keybinding setup. Some of those keys are going to be the numpad

Go look at Blender's default keybinds and tell me what you would change so the numpad wasn't really necessary. If you can simplify their keybinds I'm sure they would love to see your PR.