When pressing the ‘alt’ key the software seems to freeze until either the mouse is clicked or the escape button is pressed then everything works normally. Is this a bug or is it waiting for some some of input? Using the latest nightly build.
Unfortunately Alt is problematic because the platform handles is in its own way. On Windows it’s used for revealing the main menu. If you look at the menu you can see letters underlined when you press Alt. Then you can navigate the menus by pressing those keys or arrow keys. Clicking the mouse, pressing Alt second time or Esc is needed to escape that.
Doh!! Of course it does. Using it on a windows system so makes perfect sense it highlights the menu items, I should have realised that.
Think I got caught up in playing with 5.99 and thinking something wasn’t working and missed the obvious.
From what I remember of windoze, it could be some kind of disability thing, for people with 9 amputated fingers. (Or is that without 9 aputated fingers? (Just to be clear, I am not a collector of amputated fingers.))
For such cases it’s waiting for one of the (underlined) menu keys. I think normal behaviour is to use only the “Alt + [key]” when pressed simultaneously.
It’s used as a modifier key for snapping (or something like that). The problem arises if you press the Alt but then change the workflow a bit and release it. That happens all the time for real human beings, we don’t use ideal workflows without errors, mistakes or interruptions.
On my Linux box, If I press [Alt] the underscore in the menu entries apprear (after a short delay), and if I then release [Alt] Those underscores disappear again. At least for KiCad and most other programs.
Firefox shows the Main menu when I press [Alt], and it stays visible when I release [Alt] and it only disappears when I press [Alt] a second time.
But there are “disabilty” settings which influence this behaviour, and tose could be turned on either on purpose or accidentally. There was a time windows did this by default, but this may have been as long ago as windows 98.
After pressing Alt the focus goes to main menu, where you can navigate using arrow keys.
It’s actually quite useful if you currently don’t want to use the rodent.
I use Windows10 with 5.99 (recent version) the alt key only changes the wheel function on my mouse. Could get nothing to freeze, didn’t seem to have any other effect.
I won’t take exception to the “Windoze” reference. However I will say I survived many versions of DOS and wish not to go back
If you perform some edit function, like Add footprint in PCBNEW that will keep your footprint “floating” following mouse cursor, and then press and release left ALT key (windows moves the focus to main menu) then the footprint+crosshair will “freeze” and not follow your mouse cursor.
I can duplicate your procedure with the same results. However the freezing I experience it the mouse pointer looses “connection” to the just added part. Hitting escape and reselecting the part allows one to continue.
I don’t recall ever being aware of this behavior. It may have been there all along.
