On Aug 6, 2013, at 6:04 AM, Rainer M Krug <rai...@krugs.de> wrote: > Hi > > I recently switched from Linux to OS X. > > One thing I haven't figured out is how I can easily access the menu > items easily via keyboard shortcut. > > Under Linux, I did CTRL-I -- N - N to insert a Lyx note. Under OS X > (Mountain Lion) I have to use several keyboard shortcuts and navigate > with the cursor keys to open the Insert menu and I insert charactars i > the text: > > - CRTL-F2 gives focus to the Meu Bar > - i navigates to the Insert menu, but does not open it AND inserts an "i" > in the document. > - Cursor Down opens the menu > - and so on. > > Am I missing something here (I hope so)? > > Cheers, > > Rainer > > -- > Rainer M. Krug > > email: RMKrug<at>gmail<dot>com > Hi Ranier,
For all the violence that the Qt widget set does to the Mac interface, it does do a lot of things right. One of these is that it plays well with the Keyboard System Preference (Apple menu -> System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts -> Application Shortcuts). There, you can set any (available) keystroke combination to any menu item, using the modifier keys Shift, Command, Option, or Control, plus a normal key. This is a lot of combinations and you should be able to find many that do not conflict with already-assigned keystrokes. Maybe someone could take it up with the developers why so many often-used menu items in LyX are not assigned key combinations out of the box. The method you describe is also available but is rarely used by Mac users because they don't know it is possible, and because it takes more effort than the above method for many instances. As you have discovered, you can get focus to move to the menu bar. (I found that Command-F2 is much easier to hit than Control-Anything.) Once the menu bar has focus, start typing letters until focus moves to the main menu item you want (usually one key is sufficient). Then hit Return (easier than down-arrow) and start typing letters again until the next level item is selected, hit Return, and so on. This will get you to any menu key without using pre-assigned key combinations. It should not insert letters into your document as long as focus remains in the menu structure. Jerry
