Keyboard entry for new “set request" pop-up windows (and requests, and combinators)

[ssilk]

TL;DR

Type “belt cursordown cursorright tab 50 tab shift-cursordown enter” to select “fast-belt”, minimum 50, maximum 50 items in the new logistic selector.

What ?

The new “set request" pop-up windows is cool (https://factorio.com/blog/post/fff-338 see third pic), but I wish to have that completely keyboard controllable.

And the way how this could work is that by default when this window opens the focus is on the item-entry. Now when I type this works like a search. So when I type “belt”, on the first letter “b” the filter-selector pops up - like when I clicked on the empty filter-icon. And by typing “elt” only items with “belt” in name are displayed in the filter-selector. Now with CURSORLEFT/RIGHT I can select which tab (logistics to weapons) I want to see. With CURSORDOWN I can leave the tab-selector of the filter-selector to enter the item-selector below. Here I can select just with cursor movement the whanted item-type. With TAB I leave the filter-selector (selecting the current selected item-type) to enter the field for the minimum number. I can type “50” and with tab I enter the next field, which is the maximum selection. As simple shortcut I can press SHIFT-CURSORDOWN here to select the minimum (50). With ENTER I save that and leave the requester.

SHIFT-TAB selects the previous field/selector.
CURSORUP/DOWN counts one up or down (for numbers).
SHIFT-CURSORUP/DOWN selects the biggest/smallest useful number.
CONTROL-CURSORUP/DOWN counts stack-size up/down (or to the next even stack-size).

This can work also for all other item selectors. Like for requester chest the focus is on the first entry and when typing this is the same search as described above. With TAB I can enter the number of items.

Or for combinators - quite similar.

Why ?

After learning it speeds setting up the player logistic a lot. At least I think this should be made so, that it is modable.

[Oedwak]

+1

The keyboard interface is a huge deal for accessibility. Those who are disabled or differently abled often have difficulty with the mouse.

Personally I just just like it for speeeeeed! As the OP said, once learned and committed to muscle memory this approach would be much faster for many players.

[tamanous]

Interestingly, User Interface for "less abled" asks for a total different approach but argues comparably: widen the options of how to change values (interaction with the gui).

So broader accessibility might be a thing of future development proposals for consideration.


Long story short: +1