single character shortcuts

[Insiteb1]

For some reason the single character shortcuts I added in Preferences as "User Defined" and "Set Key" activate as I enter text within a text frame. Not Storyboard.

IOW, I added the shortcut "M" for Master Pages, but as I enter a word with an M or m in it, the Master Page dialog pops up. Even though the single character shortcuts that are resident in Scribus (T I A P etc) do not activate as I edit.

I'm missing something in the docs or on this forum....

Can anyone help ?  Thanks

[a.l.e]

you defined a shortcut without ctrl & co?

it's probably not a good idea...

as far as i recall, it's not possible to define a "domain" (like text editing) for custom shortcuts.

[GarryP]

I've just checked, and defining the "G" key (with no modifier key) to apply the "Show Grid" function presents the same type of behaviour as Insiteb1 said, namely the grid display is toggled and the character "G" is not added to the text in a frame.

But, and I think this is what Insiteb1 is asking: 'Why, when I press "T" - for example - does the "Insert Text Frame" functionality not kick-in?'

In other words, what's the difference between a user-defined single-key shortcut and a system-defined single-key shortcut? Is there some special code running in the background and is it defined to these functions or these keys? And how can the user know which ones have this different effect?

It seems that there is one rule for user-defined shortcuts and one for system-defined shortcuts but there's no way for the user to know which is which.

Insiteb1: Please correct me if I'm wrong.

[a.l.e]

garry, i can only repeat (with a few more words) what i wrote before: user defined shortcuts are always applied.

for shortcuts that are defined in the code, the programmers has more options for defining ad hoc exceptions.

sounds plausible to me... : - )

[Insiteb1]

Garry, yes that is what I was wondering. It's easy to apply a modifier, but I was just wondering if there was a work around that I was missing, since single character shortcuts are often more intuitive and it requires an mental adjustment when switching between apps

As ALE notes, I guess it's a programmers option and I'd be the last to complain.... But if there's a work around, it'd be nice to know.

Thx

[utnik]

personally i prefere to work with shortcuts instead of navigating through endless menu lists.i use a lot of single key shortcuts in ,gimp' and ,inkscape' – and i think, ,blender' users almost can't work without them.
in scribus i use ,i', ,t', ,s', ,b', ,l' and ,z' (there are more, but usually i only remember what i use regularly...)

i would like to see a predefined set of shortcuts which covers all the main tasks – preferably single keys for stuff you don't use in text mode...

utnik

[GarryP]

I've just tried changing the shortcut for "Insert Render Frame" from "D" to "G" and things worked as I would have expected; inserting a frame by pressing "G" worked as before, and pressing "G" in a text frame gave me a letter "G" without inserting a new frame.

So it looks like there are some hard-coded instructions - as a.l.e suggests - for some functions no matter which single-key shortcut is used. If this is true then there's nothing the user can do about it and there's probably no work-around either.

It would be nice if there was some way that the user could be told this up-front rather than having to ask a question about it here. It's great that someone has asked the question because we can look to see what's going on, but it would be better if no-one else needed to ask the same question if the answer was obvious.

Either a message or some kind of colour/formatting change that can alert them to something that might have unexpected consequences would be nice. There's quite a lot of space on that panel so what about simply adding a message like: "WARNING: Single-key shortcuts may have unexpected consequences. Please use a key plus either SHIFT, CTRL and/or ALT instead."? It doesn't have to be complicated to work.

utnik: Personally I tend not to use most shortcut keys (except CTRL+S, CTRL+Z, etc.); it's just something I've not got used to doing even after more than three decades of using GUIs. I should really try though. However, I agree that it would be nice for people who use them to be able to have a good set of keys that do most of the usual functions. If I was asked which I would like I might offer: "[" and "]" for align objects left and right, and "=" for align objects centred (all horizontal alignments, while using a SHIFT modifier key would change that to vertical alignment). I think that sort of thing would be nice.

[Insiteb1]

Just a quick note. As one might expect if I had thought about it, I substituted some of my single character shortcuts with SHIFT key modifier, but it too activated the requested command rather than the capital letter when used within a text block.

Minor, but I thought someone might want to know ahead of time (aka Utnik..;-)