Fast switching between audience profiles

[Gabor]

I am creating heavily reused documentation for five different user types. My content has user-specific variables as well as audience tagging.

The way I switch between the audience profiles is by going to DITA - > Profiling/Conditional Text -> and then selecting one of the five users I have created profiles for.

Unfortunately in the Options -> Menu Shortcut Keys option, it is not possible to specify a keyboard shortcut to quickly switch between user profiles.

Also, relying on existing shortcut options is not really easy: I can quickly access DITA - > Profiling/Conditional Text by pressing alt+d and x, but then there is no way I can set up sensible keyboard shortcuts to quickly access any of my five users.

Is there a way to quickly set up a switching method between users? I am only interested in keyboard wizardry, I tend not to use a mouse because it just slows me down.

Thanks for your help in advance.

Gabor

[Radu]

Hi Gabor,

About this remark:

Also, relying on existing shortcut options is not really easy: I can quickly access DITA - > Profiling/Conditional Text by pressing alt+d and x, but then there is no way I can set up sensible keyboard shortcuts to quickly access any of my five users.

Right, so you are using mnemonics to open the DITA menu, go to the profiling submenu. We usually assign mnemonics automatically in every menu so there should also be some mnemonics assigned to every profiling condition set name from the submenu, right? But you cannot configure a mnemonic. And of course a mnemonic is not quite a shortcut.
How about if I add an issue to support defining a keyboard shortcut when you define a profiling condition set? It makes sense also to me...

Regards,
Radu

[Gabor]

Right, so you are using mnemonics to open the DITA menu, go to the profiling submenu. We usually assign mnemonics automatically in every menu so there should also be some mnemonics assigned to every profiling condition set name from the submenu, right? But you cannot configure a mnemonic. And of course a mnemonic is not quite a shortcut.
How about if I add an issue to support defining a keyboard shortcut when you define a profiling condition set? It makes sense also to me...

Exactly as you say, Radu. I would be willing to put up with mnemonics, but some of the ones that would make sense for me to use (C, S, M, A and let's say B) are unfortunately reserved by the four menu options above the profiling conditions, and as you say keyboard shortcuts would be a LOT more convenient in such cases.

Thanks for adding this as an issue. Are there any next steps for me to do in this process?

When do you think this feature would be implemented? Maybe in 18.x or only in 19.0 or later?

I appreciate your swift response, so thanks!

[Gabor]

Hi Radu,

Right, so you are using mnemonics to open the DITA menu, go to the profiling submenu. We usually assign mnemonics automatically in every menu so there should also be some mnemonics assigned to every profiling condition set name from the submenu, right? But you cannot configure a mnemonic. And of course a mnemonic is not quite a shortcut.
How about if I add an issue to support defining a keyboard shortcut when you define a profiling condition set? It makes sense also to me...

Exactly as you say. I would want to use keys C, S, M, A and let's say B to quickly access the profiles after pressing alt-d and x, but S and C are already taken by two of the menu options above and M is distributed to the second profile (instead of the third one which would be my preference), and A is given to the third profile instead of the third one, so it is all a mess up.

It would be lovely to have this issue added to your backlog. Do you think it would be picked up any time in the 18.x time frame or it will only be introduced later?

Anyways, I love the product and I know I made a good decision when I convinced the company to buy into oXygen.

Again, thanks for your support.

Best regards,

Gabor

[Radu]

Hi Gabor,

Exactly as you say. I would want to use keys C, S, M, A and let's say B to quickly access the profiles after pressing alt-d and x, but S and C are already taken by two of the menu options above and M is distributed to the second profile (instead of the third one which would be my preference), and A is given to the third profile instead of the third one, so it is all a mess up.

Right, we do some automatic mnemonic assignment and it almost never ends to be what users would expect.

It would be lovely to have this issue added to your backlog. Do you think it would be picked up any time in the 18.x time frame or it will only be introduced later?

The next Oxygen version is 18.1. And the next one after that is version 19, next year. Possibly in 19 we'll have time to work on this. We try to work on issues based on the amount of users requesting this and this particular feature (although useful) was not requested before.

Anyways, I love the product and I know I made a good decision when I convinced the company to buy into oXygen.

Thanks for the kind words. Another possibility would have been to use our SDK to implement a Java-based plugin for Oxygen which would have added those shortcuts. So if you have a Java developer you can also consider this alternative and I can give you some more details about this.

Regards,
Radu