[Geoff Waddington]

OK, let's chat about modifier keys...

Here's my proposal:

Let's do an example where, for some strange reason we want to call "Play" "Tony"

So you'll have a Control surface widget name "Tony" that sends the midi messages "90 5e 7f" and "90 5e 00"

A line in a file might look like this (no promises it will look exactly like this):

Tony 90 5e 7f 90 5e 00

So we say we are going to call those button on and off messages from the surface (the ones normally used for Mute) "Tony"

Now we need a corresponding action.

Let's call the Reaper Play action "Tony".

Now when you press the Mute button (aka Tony) Reaper will run the Play Action (akaTony).

OK now we need to accommodate modifiers like Shift, Control, etc.

In the interest of keeping things simple and readable, I suggest the following simple convention:

If you press Shift, the named button gets the modifier prepended a la "ShiftTony".

If you pressed Alt you get "AltTony".

We can allow combinations:

ShiftAltTony
OptionControlTony etc.

We simply then name a Reaper action the same (e.g. AltTony) and that action runs when Alt + Tony is pressed.

Now to keep things sane we need a rule -- Yeah, yeah I know, maximum flexibility....

The rule is the modifiers can only appear in this order:

Shift -- Option -- Control -- Alt

These are fine:

ShiftControlAltTony

OptionControlTony

ControlAltTony

These are not due to out of order modifiers:

ControlShiftTony

AltOptionTony

Not quite as flexible as no restrictions but still WAY more modifiers for a particular button than most of us can remember.

What do you think folks ?