best way to resolve key binding conflicts?

[musicalman]

Hi all, I'm new here and am having a bit of a problem. I am visually impaired so rely on keyboard navigation more than most. I've lurked around the forums for a while in addition to doing some searching, and have found that I am not the first VI user to join this community. In fact from what I have heard anyway, Open MPT has added a lot of assignable keystrokes stemming from feedback from VI users, for which I extend my congratulations to the devs.

The reason I decided to play with Open MPT in the first place is because a friend of mine who is also visually impaired has been using Famitracker, though in a really messy way. But I think the work he's done with it is awesome, despite very limited access to the tracking grid. Until now I've mainly been doing things with midi/mml, but recently my friend and I sat down and he showed me just how he uses Famitracker. In a way it was a crash course on the basics of tracking, and I learned a lot. So I decided I might have a fighting chance to at least know what I can and can't do with Open MPT, and to tell others about it since trackers are not seen well by many VI users. Plus I think sample-based modules are awesome and I've always wanted to write something in that style.

I was just reading over the Open MPT tutorial, which at first I admit didn't make much sense to my limited knowledge, but I have found ways to accomplish some things on the keyboard. However one thing I have noticed, and which I'd like to figure out before I delve too deep into other things, is that the default keyboard shortcuts seem to be locked in place. For example, let's say I want to change the basic keystrokes such as Alt G, Alt N, Alt S, etc. which switch between the different items in the view menu. While I can add new keystrokes for those functions, the old ones seem to still be tied up and can't be deleted. The old binding will cause conflicts if you, say, wanted to take a default keystroke whose purpose you don't really need and bind it to some other function that will be more practical for you. I read on this forum that the default keystrokes are locked in place because it makes less confusion, but in virtually all other programs I've used with assignable shortcuts, it is implied that when you change a shortcut, you won't expect any third party instructions about shortcuts to apply unless you restore defaults first. Many of the keystrokes already assigned make sense to me, but the ability to create a custom keymap closer to something you're more familiar with is difficult.

I know that some keystrokes are context sensitive which I imagine would make things easier in terms of managing key conflicts, but I was wondering if the behavior I described above can be changed. Thanks for reading, and keep tracking through 2017!

[Saga Musix]

Hi and welcome to the community. It's always great to hear that visually impaired users get along well with OpenMPT.
It is correct that default shortcuts get added back by default when loading a key binding; However, this is only done if they do not conflict with any other key binding. So there are two options:
1) If you want to use that specific key combination for another shortcut, just do it. The conflict will be pointed out to you and you can just agree to remove the key combination from the old shortcut. It will not get added back then.
2) If you do not want to use a specific key combination at all, you can bind it to the "Dummy Shortcut" in the global context. This prevents it from being assigned automatically, which makes sense e.g. if you want to remove a shortcut that you would otherwise hit accidentally very often.