[oXygen-user] 10.1 takes a step backward?

[Lars Huttar]

There are a number of dialogs that do not have keyboard shortcuts. The
one that bugs me most often is the Find/Replace dialog. I'm sure Syd has
run into that. Yes, you can do what you need to by tabbing around, but
if there were keyboard shortcuts for each control, you could get things
done much more quickly and reliably. A query replace (going through a
document with many search hits and replacing only some of them) is
painfully awkward due to the lack of keyboard shortcuts on the "Find"
and "Replace" buttons.

There was an email on this list on 3/20/2007 saying that shortcuts would
be added for these buttons, but it doesn't seem to have happened.
Like Syd, I am a big fan of Oxygen despite these small shortcomings, and
I recommend it to others. The lack of keyboard shortcuts is a blemish on
an otherwise excellent product.

Lars


On 3/6/2009 10:58 PM, Syd Bauman wrote:
> First, if this has already been mentioned on the list or via your bug
> reporting system and I've missed it, my apologies.
> 
> Second, let me state for the record that despite the following
> complaint, I am a big fan of oXygen. There is no other commercial
> proprietary software that I outright recommend people buy, except
> for Mac OS X. (And even that only for those not up to dealing with
> Ubuntu.)
> 
> 
> I have severe tendonitis to my wrists (bilaterally). One consequence
> of this is that I really try to avoid using the pointer (in my case
> a trackball or trackpad, as I cannot use a mouse at all), and try to
> type most commands. For those menu items that do not have keyboard
> shortcuts, I often use the operating system's "access the menu"
> shortcut (ctl-F2 on a Mac, alt-underlined_letter on my GNU/Linux
> system).
> 
> I have not tried oXygen 10.1 on a GNU/Linux yet (I use oXygen there
> very rarely), but I use oXygen almost daily on Mac OS X 10.5 with "In
> windows and dialogs, press Tab to move the keyboard focus between" set
> to "All controls" in the Keyboard & Mouse pane of System Preferences.
> 
> One action I perform reasonably frequently is Associate Schema,
> although it's usually via the New XML Document rather than explicitly
> associating a schema to an already existing XML document. Either way,
> in previous versions of oXygen I would perform this entirely from the
> keyboard. Something like:
> * cmd-N                       > new dialog
> * XML Document selected       > defaulted from last time
> * enter                       > gets "Create an XML document" dialog
> * Use DTD or Schema checked   > defaulted from last time
> * tab                         > moves me to set of schema language tabs
> * R-cursor R-cursor           > selects Relax NG
> * tab tab                     > selected "browse local" folder icon [X]
> * space                       > gets open dialog box
> * [navigate to schema]        > use normal Mac OS X keystrokes
> * return                      > syntax button automatically set from extension
> * return                      > done!
> 
> But note the [X]. Here, in oXygen 10.0 (and earlier versions, but I
> don't know how far back), there was no visual indication that I had
> selected the button with the normal folder icon that means "Browse
> for local file" (the leftmost of the 2 or 3 folder icons for browsing
> local, remote, or archive), but it worked. Now, in 10.1, tabbing in
> this dialog box skips right over the browse icons! I've tried all
> sorts of key combinations (ctl-tab, opt-tab, cursor keys, cursor keys
> w/ modifiers, etc.), but cannot seem to select that button without
> using the pointer.
> 
> Snif! Sob! PLEASE give me a way to create a new document with a
> schema associated without using the pointer!
> 
> 
> P.S. It turns out I can still create new files in oXygen without
>      using the pointer so long as I don't associate a schema. Some
>      time ago (9.2? 10.0? I forget), the "New" dialog box became a
>      combined "New" and "New from template" box. As far as I could
>      tell, there was no way to select one or the other of those tabs
>      from the keyboard, though. However, I recently discovered that
>      pressing ctl-tab 3 times or shift-ctl-tab once selected the tabs
>      bar, so that either L or R cursor keys would select the other
>      tab. Not exactly convenient, but I'm trying to teach my fingers
>      to do that.