Can I pin / dock any of the Axidraw menus in the Inkscape taskbar or sidebar?

[markitzero]

Have been enjoying Axidraw + Inkscape and have read user guides but still not sure if this is possible. I find myself using both (1) the AxiDraw Controls… and (2) AxiDraw Utilities sub-menus in the Inkscape Extensions dropdown for nearly all tasks, which led me to wonder whether it’s possible to pin them (or any Axidraw functions) to the main Inkscape taskbar or perhaps dock them somewhere they’re always accessible rather than each time having to navigate through the Extensions…Axidraw submenus. I saw that many other Inkscape functionality is dockable / pin-able, but figured perhaps that might not be possible with a 3rd-party extension like Axidraw. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to make the Axidraw functionality as easily-accessible within InkScape as possible.

[Windell Oskay]

These are not dockable windows. As you suspected, this is a difference between selected built-in windows and the extensions interface.

A couple shortcuts that might be helpful to you. First, Alt-Q (option-Q on mac) runs the last extension again, and Alt-shift-Q opens the last extension that you had open.

You can also create keyboard shortcuts for individual items, including the AxiDraw extensions, by editing the share/keys/default.xml file in your Inkscape installation. We have helped a few people set this up with special shortcuts for their particular needs, but you can also add key shortcuts for each item if you like.

[markitzero]

Those shortcuts are helpful, thanks.

Well, the one task I probably do most frequently — as I suspect would be the case for other tinkerers — is simply the Start Plotting! function (aka AxiDraw Controls…[plot tab]…Apply) But unless my most recent command was to start a plot (it usually isn’t), Alt-Q usually won’t help.

I opened the share/keys/defaults.xml file and tried to mentally parse what was going on; is there a simple 1 or 2 lines I can add (presumably some “<bind…” function?) that would create a keyboard shortcut to start a plot?

[Windell Oskay]

I don’t think that there’s a way to create a shortcut to start a plot specifically, rather than just running the last command or opening the control panel.

Since you like to tinker you might consider one or more of the following:

* Create a duplicate copy of AxiDraw Control (axidraw.inx in your Inkscape extensions directory). Change the id attribute so that it’s unique, and potentially change the name attribute so that it has a different name in the menu. Then, you’ll have two copies of AxiDraw Control in your Inkscape extensions menu after restarting Inskcape. Inkscape will store a separate set of settings for both, including which tab was open. If you give each a keyboard shortcut, then you can leave the second one for just plotting.

* Try the AxiDraw CLI. You can create command-line shortcuts for plotting. This can be as automatic as saving the file in Inkscape and using “up-arrow return” in the terminal to plot it.

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