Hi Jacob,
Thanks for your suggestion. I found another interesting way of re-
assigning the Spotlight shortcut. The original reason for wanting to
reassign keyboard shortcuts involving Spotlight is in order to use
different input keyboards to simplify typing accented characters in
other languages. When you select another input keyboard -- say, for
French or Spanish -- by checking these options in the table on the
Input Keyboard tab of the International menu under System Preferences,
you'll find there are shortcut key sequence definitions for switching
between previous and next input keyboard appearing below the table.
The thing is, the command for "Select the previous input source" has
the same shortcut (Command-Space) as Spotlight does. (This definition
predates Spotlight). If you press keyboard shortcuts button just
after the input menu shortcut definitions, you're taken to the
Keyboard shortcuts tab. The input menu switching options now appear
as an (unchecked) collapsed folder just above the Spotlight
shortcuts. Checking the box gives conflicting definitions with the
Spotlight shortcuts. However, if you stop interacting with the table
and press the "Restore Defaults" button just after the table, both
sets of shortcut definitions for input menu switching and spotlight
remain active, but the Spotlight shortcuts are switched to Control-
Space. The shortcuts are now:
Input Menu:
Select the previous input source -- Command-Space
Select the next input source in the input menu -- Option-Command-Space
Spotlight:
Show Spotlight search field -- Control-Space
Show Spotlight windos -- Control-Option Space
(The only actions here were to check the box for the Input Menu and
then to press the button for "Restore Defaults")
Your solution of tabbing to change the keyboard shortcut assignment
works, but there are still some definite glitches in the way that
focus is handled in Leopard. The instruction listed before the
keyboard shortcuts table is: "To change a shortcut, double-click the
shortcut and hold down the new keys". That actually works in Tiger on
my PowerBook (I could double-click by pressing the Control-Option-
Shift keys and tapping the space bar twice, and then enter the new
shortcut), and I originally couldn't figure out the source of Simon's
difficulties, since I only recently switched to Leopard and a MacBook.
The way I'd set up my Input Menu shortcuts was by first unchecking the
box for the Spotlight shortcuts. I still had some difficulty
assigning a new shortcut to "Select the previous input source" even
though the conflicting Spotlight definition was unchecked, so I
toggled VoiceOver off, and did the double-click sequence with my
trackpad while VoiceOver was turned off and then turned VoiceOver on
again. That worked to reassign the key. Then I went and checked the
box to turn the Spotlight shortcuts back on. Now I'd do this with the
tab sequence you outlined.
Incidentally, I read in some recent Mac forum posts on Open Office
uses Command-Space and Command-Option-Space (the settings you get if
you check the box for "Input Menus" and then press the "Restore
Defaults" button) to change language input menus in Open Office apps.
This came up because there was a version in which you couldn't use
this shortcut -- you have to go to change languages on the menu bar --
and this was reported as a bug by several people in an earlier Open
Office 3 release. It's supposedly fixed, so we might want to use
those settings eventually.
Currently I use:
Input Menu:
Select the previous input source -- Option-Shift-Space
Select the next input source in the input menu -- Option-Space
This combination was suggested in a link from the Multilingual Mac site.
Thanks,
Cheers,
Esther
On Nov 12, 2008, at 1:31 PM, Jacob Schmude wrote:
It's actually quite easy to change. Open keyboard preferences,
choose the keyboard shortcuts tab. Arrow down through the table
until you get to the spotlight hortcut. Press tab, you should here
"command-space edit text." Press your new shortcut, then tab again.
Voila. I just tried this and it worked for me without a hitch.
On Nov 12, 2008, at 15:11, Simon Cavendish wrote:
I have had a similar problem with it of which Esther and others
know very well because I had been writing about it endlessly. It
just cannot be done for some reason. The shortcut key for spotlight
won't be changed. I spent hours trying to figure it out. So you are
in good company in a manner of speaking although I'm sure this is
not what you want to hear. It drove me crazy, trying to change the
shortcut.
With best wisehs
Simon
On 11 Nov 2008, at 20:50, Chris Gilland wrote:
Hello.
Call me a little nutty, but, I do have my reasons for wanting to
do this, trust me.
I am trying to figure out when I go to
system prefs,
then keyboard and mouse,
then go to the keyboard shortcuts tab,
I interacted with the table, and went down to the shortcut to show
spotlight.
I am trying to change that from command space to option space.
Well, when I do what it says, with cursor tracking on, and I go
over to the collumn on that row that says shortcut: command
+space, if I double click, it's not letting me then hit option
space and reassign the keyboard shortcut.
All clicking is doing is checking and unchecking the on off
checkbox for that key. Yes, I made sure I was in the shortcut
collumn. I did that numerous time. I diddit both with cursor
tracking on, as well as off. and yes, when off, I did route my
mouse with vo command f5. So, I'm perplexed. How do I change this
out? This is really important. I need to know this for an online
class I am taking.
Chris.
