On 25/01/2008, at 4:20 AM, Rich Caloggero wrote:
I took a quick look at Quicksilver yesterday (spark doesn't run on
Leopard
yet), and couldn't make heads or tails of it. Anyone have any getting
started advice or anything?
Thanx much in advance.
-- Rich
Hi.
Ah, Quicksilver. Simultaniously the best and worst software on OS X,
<grin>.
there's actually been a bit of discussion about it on this list, and
you might be able to find some information by searching the archives.
I know I posted a message on what I was using it for and how I was
using it ages ago, which I can repost, if you'd like. But in this
context, what you probably want to know is how to assign shortcuts to
things.
First, I should warn you that this is a bit fiddly. And second, I
should warn you that at the moment, under Leopard, one of the big
features of assigning shortcuts under Quicksilver doesn't work, and
that's scoped keys. In other words, you used to be able to, say, have
a shortcut that would only work in finder and nowhere else, or a
shortcut that worked in all applications *except* finder, for example.
For the moment, this *doesn't* work, so any information you find on QS
on the web that explains how to do this you have to ignore. I'm kind
of hoping the next version of QS might fix this, because it's a bit of
a pain, but as long as you're a bit careful with shortcuts it isn't
*too* annoying. I have a stack that I use in finder that I can't
imagine doing without, converting html files to html, compressing
files with one keystroke, that kind of thing. I just make sure they're
assigned to keys that pretty much no app uses and I just don't hit
them in other applications, <grin>.
Anyway, how to create shortcuts, or rather, triggers in Quicksilver
language.
Say you want to run an applescript with a hotkey. First, make sure you
can run it from Quicksilver without assigning a hotkey. Activate
Quicksilver by hitting control-space. Type the full path to your script.
If you use Quicksilver a lot, there are shorter ways of getting to the
script, but I'm simplifying a bit here.
for the sake of this exercise, turn off cursor tracking so you don't
move around. If you've turned on wrapping in the VO prefs, you can go
left a couple of times. You'll hear close, the sound that says it's
wrapped the cursor to the end and execute. After that, if you go left
again, you should hear something like "scriptname, run".
If you don't have wrapping on, you'll have to go right, a lot. You'll
go past a lot of things. Action counds, unlabelled buttons, disclsure
triangles and finally a progress indicator. After that, you should run
into that "scriptname, run" thing.
That's what command Quicksilver is going to do.
If, by some chance, it says open or something instead, press tab and
type run and have another look at that message and hopefully it should
say run.
Press enter, and your script should run and do what you expect it to do.
Now for the shortcut. I'd probably turn cursor tracking back on for
this because you'll be doing some pretend mouse work.
First, go into Quicksilver and hit cmd-', that's an apostrophe.
Press vo-right arrow a few times. You'll go past a table, a splitter
and another
table. then you hit an unlabeled button. press vo-shift-m on that like
it was a context menu, and select hotkey.
You *then* end up in a dialog box.
This is basically the same as the window you were working with before,
although a bit less cluttered. Type the same script path you did
before and hit vo-right until you hear what command will be run to
make sure it's what you want and press enter.
Now you're back where you started. Press vo-left, you want the table
to the left of that unlabelled button. Interact with the table and you
should find your command in there. Make sure the check box to the left
of it is checked, and vo arrow right until you here none. that means
there is no hotkey. Here, you'll have to press vo-shift-space twice,
to click the mouse button, then press the hotkey you want. Looking at
it again, instead of none you should see whatever hotkey you pressed.
As I said, it's fiddly, and the first few times you do it it'll take a
while. I'm kind of imune to it now, <grin>. Aren't you sorry you asked?
