Dev:Ref/Requests/Tool API Refactor

This is a proposal for the enduser features for tool api refactor

1) custom bindings for keys, menus, and buttons including triggering of scripts via any of the previous (similar to Silo)

2) scripting - record a series of events for the purpose both creating tutorials (zbrush - scripting reference http://pixologic.com/home/z2coderef.html ) and for creating macros or tool pipes (modo )

3) record screenshots and a text description of the event allowing the insertion of text or audio notations (wink) (I'm thinking output to the sequencer, having a text/html input area for each frame then have option for html or wiki output - note that having a notes area for frames would be superb tool for story boarding, etc. as well)

4) ability to insert syncronized voice recordings, and ability to trigger video clip as well - this would allow the equivalent of video tutorials with voice over, but at much reduced disk space and band width.

5) ability to record the entire script to video if desired (so that fast forwarding through parts of it can be done, etc.) perhaps after a download have the option to do 'record all scripts to videos' that would chug through for a few hours. (this would be to save bandwidth in exchange for computer time - lots of 3rd world have very limited bandwidth but okay computer power so might desire this).

6) Button highlighting and an overlay that shows the mouse/key presses

7) Continous logging of the commands used - K3D does this, then if there is a crash the user can play back the script to verify the crash, also the script can be mailed to the developers to replicate the crash.

Here are thoughts and suggestions from joeri,

"Will it have audio recording? Will it have a pause function on playback? Will it have a rewind/time slider? Will it have a scriptable language for manual editing? Will it have edit functions like cut, paste, speed-up, keypress highlite, insert text ballons? Can it show result iamges/movies? What parts of blender does it cover (3d / noodles/ seq editor/ user settings)? Will it be blender version independant? These are things that a dvd can do easely.

What I think a blender tutor should be able to do to be more then a video is become interactive. "Repeat after me, here I added a cube, now you". "

The audio recording - is somewhat external in my above proposal. Pause/Rewind should be doable for the scripted version. Scriptable language for manual editing should be fine. Cut/Paste - I would think the user would need to save the file at some point and then append. Speed up - time compression should be doable (just tell the playback function to cut the durations by half - although potential odd results could occur)