Hi Dan,
The easiest way to get answers to your TextEdit questions is to use
the Help menu on the menu bar. (VO-M to menu bar, press "H" to
navigate to the Help menu, arrow down to "TextEdit Help", then go to
the link for "Formatting". This covers lists as well as fonts.)
However, if you use the command to "Show Fonts" (Command-T) under the
Format menu, a window will appear that allows you to select fonts by
family, type (bold, italic, regular, etc.) and font size. You may
have to use the window chooser menu (VO-F2 twice) to make sure you
are in the Fonts window if you don't get routed their automatically.
There are table entries for collection, family, typeface and size that
you can interact with and set -- probably leave collection set to
"all" and just select type family (default is Helvetica) and size.
Close (Command-W) when you're done.
Chris has answered you about lists (assuming you're working in a Rich
Text Format document; in Plain Text Format or in Mail you can type
bullets by pressing Option-8). I don't use color myself in TextEdit.
The color chooser menu is possible to use from the color palette menu
selection, but not easy, since it's not entirely accessible. What
you'd have to do is tab to the input field and type in a color like
"red". Then you'd have to fiddle with your cursor tracking options and
turn on Mouse Keys so that you could move your cursor down just below
"Palette" into the scroll area so that you could click your trackpad
or mouse button and make your choice. This is one of the areas where
I've found focus behavior to be "glitchy" under Leopard -- at least
for the recent MacBooks where they've removed the Numlock key and
number pad.
An easier way to get color selections into TextEdit is to paste in
colored text that you've saved into a file. You'd also have to use VO-
T to find out about text attributes (fonts, colors, and style) and
should review the sections in the VoiceOver Getting Started Guide for
Leopard about navigating by text attributes. For example, you can
copy selections from a web page that demonstrates color selections (or
use the "Services" menu under any Safari, Mail, or any application and
the TextEdit submenu entry for "New window containing selection" to
copy selections to TextEdit without using the clipboard), then save
this in a TextEdit file. Here are some entries you could save into a
file named "Colors" (they are all in bold type font):
red
green
blue
yellow
pink
cyan
dark red
deep green
gray
black
While you're editing your file, open the "Colors" file in a separate
TextEdit window and use Command-accent to cycle between the different
windows of the application. So if you want to change your font to red,
switch to the Colors file (Command-accent) and copy (Command-C) "red"
from the above list; then switch back (Command-accent) and paste it
into your TextEdit file with (Command-V), press the delete key 3 times
(to delete the actual letters "r-e-d", then start typing (for example
"This is red ") then copy and paste in a sample of regular (black
text) from earlier in your file, delete the letters, and resume typing
your text. You can navigate back to the "Colors" file and grab other
colors like blue, then copy and paste them in. You could also just
paste in a selection of colors at the start of your TextEdit file so
you don't have to switch between files.
I don't use Microsoft Word, so if you can generate a sample Rich Text
Format file with the font colors you want, you could just save in RTF
format and copy the file over to your Mac to use as your colors file.
There are probably better ways to do this, but it's not a feature I
use. If I wanted to use a font other than black, I'd probably just
read my mail and select a sample word from where someone had replied
to me -- the first level response is blue and the next is dark green.
This post is just a quick solution on the fly. Maybe other list
members who work more with fonts under TextEdit can make suggestions.
I think Cara may have checked into different font styles?
Cheers,
Esther
P.S. I've always wondered why people who want to match particular
document formats don't simply use a sample Word document as a
template, and use TextEdit's ability to create styles in RTF mode to
do these setups. Again, not something I work with, but if you select
specific fonts and sizes etc. why not save them as a style option?
This probably makes more sense to someone who works with Word and
reads the TextEdit help documentation than it does to me.
On Nov 13, 2008, at 9:15 AM, Dan Geise wrote:
Hello list,
I have a question about text edit.
How do you change the size of the text. I found where it says . make
bigger. or .make smaller. that does not tell me in relation to the
other text how much larger it made it. also, where do you find where
to change the color of a highlighted text. I have headings in my
document I want to make larger and change the colors rather than
just black. also while i am on the subject, how do you make a list
with bullets next to each item. thanks, dan.
