On Saturday, March 8, 2003, at 02:00 PM, Brad Beyenhof wrote:
Up until now I have been merely a university student and casual user of Finale, but recently I have landed a job as an engraver for a local publishing company.
My problem now... the computer they gave me to use at work is a Mac. I have
little experience working with Macintosh computers in general, and almost no
experience with MacFin.
On WinFin I often use keyboard commands to switch tools (Alt-T-S: Speedy,
Alt-T-D: Mass Edit, etc.), and I have found no corollaries on the Mac.
The built-in MacFin way of doing this is to manually program keyboard equivalents. Use opt-ctl-F through opt-ctl-' to program a keyboard equivalent, then ctl-F etc to switch to the tool you've programmed. However, as you can see with a quick glance down at the keyboard, this only allows you to program keyboard equivalents for 8 tools, which is woefully inadequate for a serious user.
I
remember talk on this list a while back about the necessity of a third-party
macro utility to get such a task accomplished. From that conversation, I
seem to recall that "QuicKeys is the best." However, it comes with a fairly
hefty price tag these days ($100).
Are there any freeware (or significantly less expensive) alternatives?
None as good as QuicKeys, as far as I know.
I
know I'll probably be able to get my employer to buy something for me if I
can demonstrate need, but I'd prefer not to ask for something as expensive
as QuicKeys after working there less than a month.
IMO, if your employers had the slightest clue about productivity on the Mac, they would have bought QuicKeys for you already. (Also TGTools and Robert Patterson's plugins, both indispensable.) I think pretty much all of the MacFin power users on this list use it, and depend on it to stay productive. It's not just about switching tools, it's about custom keyboard shortcuts, programmable sequences, etc. I could not imagine using Finale without it.
So here's the bundle:
$84.95 QuicKeys 5.0 (at MacMall) $84.90 TGTools $59.00 Patterson Plug-Ins
So, $228.85 isn't exactly chump change, but given the huge productivity benefits of these products, your employers would be foolish *not* to make this investment.
- Darcy
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"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
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