I have worked on several DFHack scripts to enable hotkeys for Dwarf Fortress: https://github.com/definability/dfhack-scripts.

Discussions that made these scripts possible:

• Draw action hotkeys for Classic ASCII glyphs mode in the corresponding panels #5552
• Create key bindings for zones #5550

The motivation:

• As a player used to RTS, I expect almost every action in the game to be doable via hotkeys.
• Other players also wish for more key bindings.
• Experienced Dwarf Fortress players pointed out that the game was playable with a keyboard in 2023.
• For some reason, the game lacks many bindings and does not show the existing ones until I use the mouse.

Tell me what you think, and what other features I can add to make this overlay set more advanced. Should it be integrated into the standard DFHack scripts set, or is it useful just for me?

I would appreciate high-quality screenshots from the Premium version, especially if you allow me to use them on the project's GitHub page (PR is welcome).

Below is the information from the README, but I decided to make this post self-contained.

gui/visible-hotkeys.building

The overlay displays hotkeys for the building menu. To install, download the GUI and internal folders from the repository to your hack/scripts.

The use is straightforward: add

overlay enable gui/visible-hotkeys.building

to your dfhack-config/init/dfhack.init, and your building menu will contain the hotkeys.

The overlay reads the key bindings from the game settings, which must be consistent with your setup.

gui/visible-hotkeys.zone

The game lacks bindings for zone painting, which drove me crazy when I created temples to all religions. Download the GUI and internal folders from the repository and install them in your hack/scripts.

Thus, the overlay introduces the following features:

1. Assign key bindings for different zones.
2. Show these key bindings.
3. A set of bindings I chose is used by default.

To enable the plugin, add the following to your dfhack-config/init/dfhack.init:

overlay enable gui/visible-hotkeys.building

To modify the hotkeys, add something like this to dfhack-config/init/dfhack.init:

overlay trigger gui/visible-hotkeys.zone add Meeting Area A

If you wish to clear key bindings for a specific zone (for example, to avoid interference with other key bindings), you can use the clear command in the same configuration file:

overlay trigger gui/visible-hotkeys.zone clear Pit/Pond