creating new keyboard shortcuts, and modifying toolbar

motherghost wrote:
Question 1). how do i create new keyboard shortcuts?

You read the System's Help which states:

*+Creating keyboard shortcuts for applications+*
+You can assign your own keyboard shortcuts to menu commands in any Mac OS X application or in the Finder. This may be useful if, for example, one of the "global" shortcuts, which works the same in most applications, is used by one application for a different purpose. In this case, you can assign it a different key combination.+

+Note: You can create keyboard shortcuts only for existing menu commands. You cannot define keyboard shortcuts for general purpose tasks such as opening an application or switching between applications.+

+Choose Apple menu > System Preferences and click Keyboard & Mouse. Then click Keyboard Shortcuts.+
+Click the Add ➕ button.+
+Choose an application from the Application pop-up menu. If you want to set the same key combination for a menu command that appears in many applications, choose All Applications.+
+If the application you want to select does not appear in the list, choose Other and locate the application using the Open dialog. Some applications may not allow you to set keyboard shortcuts.+

+Type the menu command for which you want to set a keyboard shortcut in the Menu Title field.+
+You must type the command exactly as it appears in the application menu, including ellipses and any other punctuation. (An ellipsis is a special character that looks like three periods. To type an ellipsis, you can press Option-semicolon (;). Or use the Character Palette. It may be difficult to tell whether the command is written in the menu with a real ellipsis or with three periods, so if one does not work, try the other.)+

+Click in the Keyboard Shortcut field and press the key combination that you want to assign to the menu command, and then click Add.+
+You cannot use each type of key (for example, a letter key) more than once in a key combination.+

+Quit the application for which you added or changed a keyboard shortcut.+
+Restart the application to see the keyboard shortcut in the application's menu.+
+If you assign a keyboard shortcut that already exists for another command or another application, your new shortcut won't work. Find the menu command that's using it and reassign the keyboard shortcut for that item.+

+To remove a customized shortcut, click the Delete (–) button.+

+If you want to return all the shortcuts to their original key combinations, click Restore Defaults.+

Question 2). how do i modify the toolbar, not the one on top that has charts etc on it, but the one under it that has fonts and line spacings etc. i would like to add a button that allows me to easily change the spacing between paragraphs, and another that I can click for the 'symbol' font.

Happily we can't

Question 3). is there a way to drag the font color menu down so that it stays open?

Open the Font Inspector (cmd T)
Then leave it and it's Colors menu open.

If you aren't comfortable with the program's Help, download the Pages User Guide from Help > Pages User Guide.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE vendredi 30 janvier 2009 17:36:11)

Yvan, did you actually try creating new keyboard shortcuts for Pages? It seems that none of the iWork applications allow you to create/modify keyboard shortcuts.

That is not true.

Creating and modifying keyboard shortcuts in OSX is done in System Preferences:

+Apple Menu > System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > click on the plus button under the window > Application: Pages > Menu Title: > Keyboard Shortcut > Add+

You need to restart the application and the keyboard will be shown next to the menu item.

Correction:

Creating and modifying keyboard shortcuts in OSX is done in System Preferences:

+Apple Menu > System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts > click on the plus button under the window > Application*: Pages > Menu Title: > Keyboard Shortcut > Add+

You used to need to restart the application and the keyboard would then be shown next to the menu item. That has changed either in OSX 10.5.6 or in iWork '09 because it now updates immediately.

NB re Application* Neither iWork or Pages will appear in the proffered list. You will need to choose Other… and go find it in the Applications folder.

Thanks! I somehow completely missed the Other option.

Thanks for pointing out the problem.

It got me thinking, so I double checked. It is certainly a changed behavior in the OS.

It always behaved this way as far as we don't install at least a new shortcut for a program.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 31 janvier 2009 13:04:41)

motherghost wrote:
hi

thank you for the assistance with the keyboard. that worked. now why do you say "happily" we can't put new buttons on the format toolbar? there are two reasons this would be nice.

One of the basics of Appleland is: "don't multiply the way to reach a feature"
The described ones are already reachable.
To change the color of text, we have already a dedicated button in the ToolBar.
alpha, omega and so on are easily reachable from the Character Palette, just remember that they are Greek characters 😉
If you often need them, you may insert them in the Favourite page of the named Palette.

Last not least, if you want every feature available in Word, the best soluce is to use Word 😉

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE samedi 31 janvier 2009 19:40:38)

Hi,
Font colours ~ Format Bar ~ the little colour box after the font accesses all the square box colours plus a link at the bottom for the color menu. Just select the one you want. You can also select the text and use command shift c to bring up the Apple color menu.

Symbols: Insert symbol opens the character palette.

If you go to System prefs >International > Input menu > you can select the Character palette and the Keyboard viewer which will then make both available under a flag on the menu bar as long as you select 'Show input menu in menu bar' at the bottom of the window. Hopefully it will be your own flag ~ I have to make do with the Australian one..

The keyboard viewer will show which keys to press for the regular symbols by changing the symbols when control, option or shift is selected. Pressing the green button will change the size of the keyboard.
The character palette also has a gear at the bottom which lets you send symbols into a favorite list.

My small screen iBook has just been replaced 🙂
S.

Message was edited by: Ashka

Ashka wrote:
Hopefully it will be your own flag ~ I have to make do with the Australian one..

Just paint out our Federal star and edge the others in red and you'll be fine.

Don't be too miffed, the Australian flag is just a nod to local pride, essentially the system is the same as the USA system.

I think you are right to point out the inconsistencies in the User Interface. Yes there are many things duplicated and many things not duplicated.

Why? Well what day of the week is this, and which way is the wind blowing from Cupertino?

+"Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles."+

and finally, i tried to find the symbol font

OS X is a unicode system and does not make special characters by switching fonts. For Greek, you can do Edit > Special Characters, View = Roman, and down to Greek.

I might be missing something here. I was very pleased to find out that you can create your own keyboard shortcuts for Pages; I am getting used to it and prefer it to Word, however I like being able to create shortcuts for my own commands, for example inserting Footnotes.

I have tried adding this via System Preferences and it does not seem to be working. I typed Insert Footnote into the menu box, and ctrl R as this does not seem to be assigned to anything (I would ideally like apple-R but this is assigned to Hide Rulers and I can't seem to change it). However nothing seems to be happening in Pages.

Any ideas for what I'm missing?

Uko

Have you restarted Pages, or maybe it clashes with some system shortcut or maybe you have misstyped the menu entry (it has to be a perfect match).

I don't think that I've chosen a short-cut already assigned- any suggestions for one that is definitely not so that I can try it?

Spelling seems to be okay- do you need a space in between the name of the Menu and the menu item?

E.g. should it be InsertFootnote or Insert Footnote?

Cheers
Uko