Hi Mark, Dane, and Others I started typing out a reply flesh out Jonathan's suggestion on how to create a keyboard shortcut to Hang Up in Skype (in Leopard) and also incorporate Cara's suggestion, but since Dane has nicely listed things, I'll just annotate his instructions with some comments (interleaved, and prefaced with my name below):
On Sep 5, 2009, Dane Trethowan wrote: > I read Johnathan's reply as well and I've created some shortcuts here. > > Firstly, you need to ensure that what you wish to create a shortcut > for is in the menu system of Skype, for example creating a shortcut > for "Answer" won't work because an "Answer" command is not in the > "Call" menu, unlike the PC version of Skype. > > Next you must type the description of the function you wish to > create a keyboard shortcut for as it appears, for example "Hang Up", > is a command which appears in the "Call" menu of Skype and I've > created a keyboard shortcut of ctrl-command-f10 for this. Esther: Cara made a great suggestion of using VO-W twice to have a menu command read to you letter by letter, and you can use it to find out that "Hang Up" is spelled as two words with capital letters "H" and "U". Another good method to use is VoiceOver's "Last phrase copied to the paste board" (VO-Shift-C) command to get an exact copy of what is spoken on a menu. This command works in some places where you can't otherwise copy information with Command-C -- like getting the serial numbers read off from the "About this Mac" information panel, or what VoiceOver reads when you navigate to buttons, or the status line information, like the summary of how many items, total play time, and size in MB are in a selected playlist (when you VO-down arrow from the songs table in iTunes that corresponds to a playlist selected in the sources table). Because VO-Shift-C reads everything in a phrase, you probably want to open a TextEdit window to use as an intermediate location to paste the copied phrase (with Command-V), because there may be some extraneous words you want to delete. But sometimes there will be symbols or phrases in a menu that I don't know how to type directly -- like phrases that end in "ellipsis". OK, I now know that I can type the symbol for ellipsis with Option+Semi- Colon, but I'd never be able to type that into a shortcut key definition if I didn't already know how to type the symbol without using VO-Shift-C to copy the phrase and Command-V to paste it. Keyboard shortcuts should be made when applications are not active, so close Skype before proceeding. > > > Open system Preferences and select "Keyboard and Mouse" > Next select the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab. > Find the table listing the keyboard Shortcuts, interact with it and > go to the bottom. > Expand the "Applications" part of the table". > Stop interacting with the table, VO-right and press the first button > you come to, this is the "Add" button. Esther: You don't actually need to go to interact with the table listing of Shortcuts and expand the Applications section at the end when you are creating a new shortcut. Checking existing shortcut assignments for applications can be useful if you already made an assignment and want to make sure that you are not using the same key you used earlier. If you do want to check and expand the "Applications" part of this table, after navigating to the table and interacting (VO-Shift-Down Arrow) use VO-Shift-End on a full keyboard, or VO-Fn-Shift-Right Arrow on a laptop, to move to the end of the table (including scrolling). Then VO-Left Arrow till you can hear the name of the descriptor field announced (e.g. "All Applications"). To expand or collapse the description, use VO-backslash (on an English keyboard, or alternatively use VO-H twice to bring up the Commands menu and select "Toggle disclosure triangle") Just as a warning, I've sometimes found that the new keyboard shortcut assignments that were made for other applications get "lost", in the sense that after some time they no longer appear in this table, even though they are still in effect. In any case, the first time you assign a new shortcut to a third-party app like Skype, you can simply navigate past the table (without interacting or reading contents) to the button, which in Leopard says (when you use VO-H): "Click to define shortcuts within applications" and press this with VO-H. A dialog window will appear. > Go to the "Applications" Menu and select "Skype" as the application > you wish to create shortcut keys for. > Vo-Right to the "Shortcut Description" area and Type the keyboard > shortcut name in the "Shortcut description" field, for example "Hang > Up" > Vo-Right again to the "Keyboard shortcut" area and press the keys > you wish to use for that shortcut, when done Press the "okay" button > near the bottom of the window. > Esther: Shortcuts can be defined for "All Applications" setting of the pop up menu button or for a specific application. It is much easier to assign a new shortcut key for a specific application. With the large number of VoiceOver shortcuts, existing application shortcuts, and general OS X shortcuts, you run into the possibility of using a shortcut assignment that you will later want to use -- but just don't know about yet! In a specific application, I usually test the shortcut sequence before making an assignment to make sure there's no conflict with an existing definition. If you copied the command name with VoiceOver's "Last phrase copied to the paste board" command (VO- Shift-C), and pasted it into a TextEdit window for modification, you can simply paste the name of the menu command into the text box for "Menu Title:", and then navigate to the "Keyboard shortcut:" field and press the keys you wish to use as a shortcut. (I tend to be sloppy about this and just press "Return" after I press the keys for the shortcut to commit my changes, and press "escape" if I want to cancel, but Dane's correct that you should navigate to the "Add" button and press it (VO-Space) when you're done, or press the "Cancel" button.) > I'm not sure whether you have to or can have the application you're > defining keyboard shortcuts for active in the background, I usually > exit that application just to be sure that keyboard shortcuts will > be applied, I then exit "System Preferences" and run the > application, in this instance Skype. > You must close an application before you assign a keyboard shortcut in order for the assignment to take effect. The reason is that the shortcut assignment is stored in that application's preferences file (called a "plist" or "property list" file, and stored under your account's ~/Library/Preferences folder). This file is opened every time you open an application and the contents are read into temporary space. When you modify your application preferences, this area is updated, and the changes are saved back into the plist file when you quit the application. If you assign a shortcut when an application is open, your assignment will be overwritten as soon as the application is closed, and the current preference settings are copied back from the temporary register and updated. You can check which files are being read by opening a finder window and using "Go to folder" (Command-Shift-G), then typing or pasting in: ~/Library/Preferences Set this to list view (Command-2), navigate (VO-Right arrow) to the table and interact. VO-Right arrow to the "Date modifed" column and sort (VO-Shift-Backslash on an English input keyboard, or VO-H twice to bring up the Commands menu and choose "Sort column"; applying the sort command more than once reverses the sort order each successive time). When you start new applications and then use Command-Tab to switch back to the Finder window you can see exactly which preference files get modified. They'll have names like "com.skype.skype.plist" or "com.apple.mail. plist". If you delete this preference file, or move it to another directory so that a new preference file is created here the next time an application is opened, you will lose your shortcut definition and your preferences will revert to default values. (Trashing your preference file can sometimes be a useful fix, if your settings have become hopelessly garbled.) In the case of system-wide keyboard shortcut definitions, you should reboot your computer in order for these to take effect. People can skip the overly technical descriptions in this post, which are only meant as explanations for the curious. And there's no need to do experiments with Finder and the ~/Library/Preferences folder. HTH. Cheers, Esther > > On 06/09/2009, at 4:22 PM, M. Taylor wrote: > >> >> Hello Jonathan and Everyone, >> >> After reading Jonathan's reply, I tried to create a keyboard >> Shortcut for >> hanging up a Skype Call but was unsuccessful. As I have never >> attempted to >> create a keyboard application Shortcut before, I would appreciate >> any advice >> on how to accomplish this. >> >> The steps I took which did not work were as follows: >> >> 1. >> Keyboard Shortcuts under System Preferences. >> >> 2. >> Selected the Applications area of the Dialog Box. >> >> 3. >> From the Drop-down list I selected Skype.app. >> >> This is where I get confused. It would appear that I am to enter >> the exact >> menu command for the shortcut I wish to use. Where may I find a >> list of >> these Shortcuts. I tried typing in, "hangup" but this did not work. >> >> Thank you, >> >> Mark >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Jonathan C. >> Cohn >> Sent: Saturday, September 05, 2009 4:23 PM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: Skype and Voice Over. >> >> >> 1. You do not have to script these keys. I was able to assign F9 and >> F10 to call and hang up. System preferences keyboard and mouse has a >> pane for keyboard shortcuts of menu items. I went down to the >> applications area at the bottom (This is in plain old Leopard) and >> added in skype application. >> >> In terms of recognizing on call vs off line. There are built-in >> "groups" for this, and I have given instructions on this list on how >> to enable the "on-line" predefined group. >> >> Jon >> >> On Sep 5, 2009, at 6:52 AM, william lomas wrote: >> >>> >>> no it doesn't >>> voiceover also has no hang up or answer hotkeys >>> but I guess we can script them. Nor does it tell us, who is online, >>> away in skype me mode, etc >>> Will >>> On 5 Sep 2009, at 11:40, Jesse Bollinger wrote: >>> >>>> >>>> Hello everyone, >>>> >>>> I find skype very easy to use with VO but I do have a question. >>>> When I >>>> am on Windows it causes my screen reader to shut off when I'm in a >>>> call. >>>> I haven't had a voice chat with anyone using the mac yet. Does VO >>>> turn >>>> off during the call? >>>> >>>> Thanks, >>>> >>>> Jesse >>>> >>>>> >>> >>> >>>> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
