Not meant to be hostile.

Xara's 1-6 keys are shortcuts. You don't seem to use them as a matter of routine. That's fine, others do use them. The shortcuts are already there, just not as "friendly" as a more dynamic approach as suggested. Further, they cannot be remapped (unless I missed it). So the suggestion is simply to change the present shortcut keys to something more "industry standard." And by "industry standard" I am not limiting that phrase to Adobe products, but scores of other products through many years.

Anyway, sometimes product suggestions reveal a limitation in the knowledge of the user (didn't know feature X is present, or how to use feature X). In those cases it is good that others pop into the thread and guide that user. Other times it seems that some following posts invalidate the user's request, whether intended or not.

I did an illustration recently where I needed to zoom in to use the shape builder to build the shape on a lower layer. The difference between zooming in further to use a larger nib or zooming out to see a larger portion of the illustration, I was constantly hitting the size shortcuts in order to not draw outside the lines. That was a pita. If I choose say a 25 px nib, I expect it to remain 25 px regardless of zoom.

Take care, Mike