Another bug..Fast building now ruined?

Ok ive been playing for over a year now and love making large builds such as massive ships....Houses..Space Ships...Everything. And now since this new update my building rate has been crippled. I used to be able to make a nice decent ship in a day primwise.. Now Since the linden introduced a new feauture? Or is it a bug. What ever it is its LL is about to loose another paying customer.

The problem is in the feauture every builder uses. Its the size adjustments and rotation adjustments and several other adjustment tools.

Using the method i use which is quite quick using the NUM pad. it used to be ez and made building really fast

First go into build mode and click in the size adjustment. Say you want a 1m cube but its .5m So in the old version all ya did was click in it and hit "1" "enter" "1" enter" then the old figure 1.5, or whatever would be hilighted and the second time you hit enter the number would be deleted by 1. NOW when you do that ur cube will go to .511 or 11.5 which is cancelled to 10. This dosent seem like much but manually hilghting each little box becomes time consuming considering i normally could make somtin like that in 3 secs now it takes 5 or more. Its a hassle. And it adds up considerbly when your working with a 1-2k prim build

Is anyone else affected by this?

The highlighting behavior with the Enter key was changed in the last patch, I assume to make it easier to edit individual digits. As best I can tell, here's the logic (which some people like and some don't): if you want to change a number incrimentally from .500 to .501 to .502, while watching how it fits with surrounding prims, all you need to do now is position the cursor at the end of the field, hit backspace, then 1, and when you press Enter, the cursor will remain in position so all you need to do is press backspace again to change the 1 to a 2. With the old behavior, the entire field would end up getting highlighted, forcing you either to type the whole 3 digits over again every time, or else arrow to the digit you want and then press delete or backspace before entering your new digit. This new behavior takes a little getting used to if you're already in the habit of the old way, but it is actually faster for single-digit editing (and yes, I know some die hard complainers are gonna yell at me for saying that, but hey, life goes on, deal with it).

If you prefer the old highlighting behavior, you can replicate it by using the Tab key instead of the Enter key. When you press Tab the selection advances to the next field AND hilights the whole thing. If you want to go back to the field you were just in and highlight that, simply press Shift-Tab. So, instead of Enter, use the sequence Tab->Shift-Tab. It's just one extra keystroke, and it works just fine. If you type at average speed, that's an extra .28 seconds per edit, not exactly anything epic.

For a 2000 prim build, if you edit every prim four times, the whole thing will take about 37 minutes longer than it used to, assuming you don't take advantage of the new Enter behavior, and you use Tab->Shift-Tab every time. However, considering that every incrimental edit like the kind I described above actually saves at least two keystrokes over the old method (possibly more, depending on exactly what your habit was), your build would end up being almost 19 minutes quicker than with the old way. If you use a combination of the two, it's gonna come out pretty much the same as it would have before.

Now, are these calculations a bit contrived and unscientific? Of course they are. What's important here is not the exact math, but the fact that little changes like this are not the end of the world. In the end, they really don't make any difference. In a developing platform like SL, it's crucial not to get too attached to habits, and always be willing to embrace change. Change is inevitable. Those who adapt to it quickly succeed, and those who don't don't. If the behavior of a keystroke or two gets modified, so what? Even if it was something you used all the time that you were totally in love with, either learn the way it works at the moment, or stop building.

It's not the tools that build the model, it's the artist. A good artist will create, regardless of the available tools. If your pencil gets dull, sharpen it. If it wears out and can't be sharpened anymore, burn it and draw with the charcoal. When the charcoal runs out, prick your finger, and draw in red.

If the Enter key works slightly differently than it used to, learn another way to do what you want, and establish that as a habit. If that new behavior changes tomorrow so your new habit is obsolete, learn whatever the new way is, and go with that. It's that simple.

Except that ten key entry for anyone good at it is much faster than the keystrokes for tab shift tab. This is slowing me way down to as I have to leave the ten key pad to do the arrowing and backspacing and back to the ten key pad, being right handed, this is easier than the tab shift tab one handed with my left hand. Sorry, but if I have to use my right hand to do the shift for tab shift tab, that slows me way down too.

Eventually, I'll get quick enough the difference won't make a huge deal, but for those of us very ten key oriented, its hard. Add in the reflexes for chat being different and necessitating the dreaded reach for the mouse when you're fixed to the keyboard and I'm totally disenchanted with this portion of the update. I can learn to live with it, but I don't have to like it.

For the chat line, something I can hit to activate it easily with the keyboard is imperative. I'm not sure I care what it is, but give me a keyboard command I can get used to hitting to get chat as active without reaching for the mouse!!!

Char

I wasn't really aware of this problem, as my builds by their very nature call for slow, methodical work. But for someone who's used to building rapidly, I suppose it would be maddening. I'm sorry for you that this happened.

the whole point is it was a change of something that did not require fixing as it was working fine before!!! Why not spend the time working on something that enhances the building process not sets us all back to square one until or minds and bodies learn the new actions. We have all been asking for more building controls but nothing seems to get done.(

Wise man say, if you find some things hard to swallow, chop of your head and feed through the neck. Then learn to live without head. Its the artist. Not the tools.

Yes, and artists are cranky gits.