So I've been a little bummed at this topic and one other where tempers have flared a little, although I'm hoping it's a mild flare. :(
On the topic itself and various bits:
1. The "vi" reference - vi is (pardon to those who know) a text editor used in Linux (originally, now there are ports) commandline mode. Most text editors give you immediate control over the text, and use command keys do to various things. vi, on the other hand, starts you out not in a text editing mode, but in a command mode, and you have to hit a key to edit a line of text. It's very heavy on commands. To do nearly anything, you have to learn a particular key sequence. Once you do this, it's very fast and has many people who swear by it. But the learning curve is steep. So it's a valid argument to be made against a lot of key sequences being added to Simutrans. (Whether or not we're at that level is another argument that I won't address)
2. I think part of our problem is that we *are* a small community with an even smaller number who can/do contribute to development and playing resources. We have a lack of good tutorials (which is not to say that the work that people have done to make them is wasted, mind), a lack of presentation for new players.... People have worked on this and spent real time - but it always needs updating and tends to lag behind. I think it's just a natural consequence of our small community.
I do see a point to both sides of the argument. On the one hand, the more undocumented special keys needed to do things in the game, the fewer people will know about them, and new players will be more likely to give up. On the other hand, as much work as has gone into Simutrans, the icon system is still not all that great as compared to some games that have lots of money to spend on polish.... There's ways to fix, but it takes a lot of time and we're all volunteers; or rather, specifically in this case, all coders are volunteers, and spend time doing what they think is a best use of their time - already they fix bugs and do things that aren't fun; and touch on various features already.
So how to fix this problem? I'm not sure it can be fixed easily. Either we need more volunteers, which means attracting more players as a small percentage of players might get interested in coding; or we need more money - which is not practical and would cause lots of strife, probably.... So... more players? Well, maybe better documentation might help retain more players.... I dunno. But even that comes down to a huge time investment.
I'm not sure what would help the most.
So any new ways of trying to get documentation out would either require lots of work making documentation, or even more work adding funtionality to the game (like some games have a pop-up the first time you do something - so when you activate a tool, it could pop up info about that tool with a "don't show this again" already checked, so when the closed, it went away for good unless they unchecked the "never show"...) But that, if it was considered a good idea, would require more coding to implement............
Every solution involves work.
The only strong opinion I have is that I've long been a supporter of control keys to add functionality that the majority might not want, but is supported for the oddballs like me who benefit from something. Although I think some mainstream-useful functionality (e.g. tunnel entrances) has snuck in there, so maybe a valid argument that a better system is needed - either to share info or to make these functions available in the icon system somehow (like a little popup that has radio buttons to select the tool's mode or something)......
I only hope that as we talk it out in the community, we can all remain not merely friendly (i.e. on the surface), but truly friends, even where we all disagree. Talking it out is part of the solution; eventually, something has to be decided; but hopefully it won't be seen as winners/losers, just the simple fact that something has to be chosen from hopefully the majority view, which hopefully reflects the better choice, but it doesn't always end up that way, just because we're all human and we're such a small community, and even smaller with those who can contribute to coding (who will of course have more influence on what gets coded since they're the ones that volunteer to do it!)