Hello Esther,
Thank you very much for this clear explanation.
Cheers,
Anne
On Nov 20, 2008, at 4:29 PM, Esther wrote:
Hi,
On Nov 20, 2008, at 3:37 AM, Slau wrote:
Hi Anne,
One more thing to add to your excellent tip: I believe that when
you add a shortcut, the application for which you're adding the
shortcut must not be running in the background. I'm not 100 percent
certain but I seem to remember that from a couple of years ago.
That might've changed but, for what its worth, if anybody has any
trouble, it might be something to keep in mind.
Cheers.
To expand on the reason your application must not be running when
you use the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab of "Keyboard & Mouse" under
System Preferences: adding shortcuts is part of your customization,
so keyboard shortcut definitions are stored in the preference file
for that application on your computer. This file gets opened and
read every time you open the app, and any changes you make to your
default settings modify the temporary version of your preferences
that is read in and gets saved and written back to the preference
file when you close the application. So if you assign a keyboard
shortcut through System Preferences while the application is open
and running, this gets overwritten by what's in the temporary buffer
of preferences assigned through the application when you close the
app, and is never seen.
So the rules for assigning keyboard shortcuts through the "Keyboard
Shortcuts" tab for "Keyboard & Mouse" under System Preferences are:
1. Application specific shortcuts should be made when the
application is closed.
2. System-wide keyboard shortcuts require a reboot of your computer
to show up.
A good thing to do before you make a shortcut assignment is to check
this sequence in your app beforehand. Also, keep in mind that some
shortcut sequences only get activated in certain menus or after
you've selected files. This is why there's no easy answer for people
who just ask for a list of all keyboard shortcut definitions on the
Mac. This is also why it's hard to find good shortcut key
combinations for system-wide assignments -- so this should be done
sparingly and only if needed.
Finally, you can also assign keyboard shortcuts to AppleScripts,
since these act like extended menu options.
Cheers,
Esther
----- Original Message ----- From: "Anne Robertson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
To: "General discussions on all topics relating to the use of Mac
OS X by theblind" <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 2:40 AM
Subject: Creating shortcuts
Hello everyone,
In an earlier post, I suggested creating a shortcut for Hang Up
in Skype. You can create a shortcut for any menu item which does
not already have one. Here is how to do it:
To set up a shortcut for a given application, open System
Preferences,
Go to the Keyboard&Mouse pane,
Select Keyboard Shortcuts,
Click the Plus button to the right of the Outline,
A dialogue box will appear,
Click on All Applications,
Select the application for which you want to create a shortcut by
pressing Return,
You must type the exact title of the menu item as it appears in
the application,
Move to the Keyboard Shortcut field and enter the key combination
you wish to use,
Note that it does not check for conflicts with other commands you
may have created,
Click Add and you will be returned to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab
and you can add more if you want to.
Cheers,
Anne
