Hi Simon,
On Dec 8, 2008, at 12:07 PM, Simon Cavendish wrote:
I suspect Will's strictures regarding preview are to do with having
to switch over to a dictionary while reading ortranslating text
that's open in Preview. That was my issue and that is why I tend to
copy and paste the text from Preview into Textedit. The ability to
set bookmarks is very interesting, and thank you for posting it: I
shall certainly use it. Butwhen I have to switch to another
application every so very foten, it is less useful. Unless I'm
totally misunderstanding Will's needs, this is what he would have
found so irritating.
If you want to simplify sending selected text from Preview to TextEdit
without having to copy and paste, you can set up shortcut keys to do
this. The trick here is to make use of an option under the Services
menu: "New Window Containing Selection" under the TextEdit submenu of
the Services menu. The other thing you'd need to do is open System
Preferences and navigate to "Keyboard & Mouse", then go to the
"Keyboard Shortcuts" tab. VO-right arrow to the first button past the
table (where VO-H gives you "Click to define shortcuts in
applications), and press (VO-space). In the dialog window that opens,
keep the setting for Application as "All Applications" on the popup
button, then VO-right arrow past "Menu Title" and type or paste in
"New Window Containing Selection" (without the quotation marks) in the
text entry area where you're prompted to enter the exact name of the
menu command you want to add. Then VO-right arrow past "Keyboard
Shortcut" and type in the shortcut you want to assign in the text
area. Either press return to complete the dialog (or escape to
cancel), or more formally VO-right arrow to the "Add" or "Cancel"
button and press (VO-space) your selection to complete the dialog.
In order for a keyboard shortcut that is defined for "All
Applications" to take effect, you must restart your computer. This is
analogous to the requirement that any shortcut key assignments made
for specific applications must be done while that application is
closed. Again, the challenge seems to be finding a keyboard shortcut
combination that is not already in use. I tested this with "Command-
Shift-period" which is "Command-greater than" on my keyboard, and it
worked, but I suspect I should assign it to a more esoteric
combination like pressing the Option key, too.
In any event, when you select text and then use your "New Window
Containing Selection" shortcut, you'll get the results saved into a
TextEdit window. You can use select all (Command-A), or any of the
selection combinations (by word, line, paragraph, etc.) that are
defined for the Mac. See, for example, this post from the archives
that lists some of the standard combinations:
http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40macvisionaries.com/msg36031.html
(post listing some movement and selection command shortcut
combinations in Mac OS X)
A nice feature of using this services menu option for sending
selections to TextEdit, whether by shortcut assignment, or simply by
navigating to this option in the menu bar (VO-m, Right-arrow to your
current app, Down-arrow into menu, Press "S" to go to "Services",
Right-arrow to Services sub-menu, Press "T" to go to "TextEdit", Right-
arrow to go to "New Window Containing Selection" option of TextEdit
submenu), is that it's a good way to quickly copy content from web
pages that are busy with image links. For example, I find the ilounge
web pages are a good source of information about iTunes and the iPod,
but they're filled with advertising links and images that were
particularly difficult to deal with in Tiger, and also likely to
generate "Safari busy" messages. So if there were an article or
review I wanted, selecting all and sending this TextEdit with the
Services menu was a good way to get the content.
When you use the services menu to send your selection to TextEdit, be
warned that (without the keyboard shortcut) the resulting file does
not get keyboard focus, even though it gets created. Be prepared to
command-tab from your current application (Safari, Preview, etc.) to
TextEdit to see the results. When I use the assigned shortcut, the
TextEdit window does appear to get focus after I do the selection.
The Services menu options are features that were part of NeXTSTEP --
the operating system of NeXT Computer, which was the company Steve
Jobs founded when he was forced to resign from Apple in 1985. They
got built into Mac OS X. The "Start Speaking Text" Services menu
option received quite a bit of discussion on this list. There are
also useful features such as "Send selection" under the Mail submenu
of Services that will excerpt your selected text into a mail window.
HTH.
Cheers,
Esther
