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Show HN: Qboard, a drawing app with Vim-style keybindings (cjquines.com)

45 points by cjquines ↗ HN
I was frustrated with drawing apps where the eraser was E and the pen was P. Often, when I'm drawing, I want to quickly erase and then switch back to the pen. As one of my hands is on my mouse or tablet, I have to use my other hand to reach across the keyboard. I wanted a drawing app with customizable keybindings, so I made qboard a while back and have used it since.

I talk more about the design principles on the Github repo: <https://github.com/cjquines/qboard/#design-principles>.

5 comments

[ 6.4 ms ] story [ 21.9 ms ] thread
danielvaughn
Very nice. I've been working on a vim-style web design tool, that lets you build websites directly using really in-depth keyboard commands. One thing people will need is a tutorial.
kirbyfan64sos
Oh this looks very nice! One thing I might wish for is to use Escape to close the help dialog, but really that's just because I'm still opening the help dialog a lot.

Very smart UX choices here.

wnolens
I don't quite understand the reference to vim here, but I love it!

I've been using a few others but this is way faster, less distracting UI, and can be customized easily which is appreciated (I would totally choose different keys)

Only thing missing to get me using this full-time is if I can open a page on my ipad and have the result mirrored on my desktop browser open to same page. This is how I communicate designs over zoom by sharing my screen but being able to write with a stylus. Don't even need multi-writer ability necessarily. Heck I'd even contribute a PR.

qt6rust
I'm sure you already know this but kindly don't give up on the effort. The lack of traction is because a huge majority often tries to read from phone. Perhaps next time try posting when people are likely to be at work.