[[rate 300]]Hi Jürgen and Others, The ellipsis character is typed using a keyboard shortcut with the Option key. On a US or other English language input keyboard, this combination can be typed by pressing Option+semi-colon. Assuming that you are using a German input language keyboard, this combination can be typed by pressing Option+period.
However, a more general way to get the exact menu command you need for a keyboard shortcut is to use VO-Shift-C, which is the VoiceOver shortcut to copy the last spoken phrase to the clipboard. Then paste in this phrase with Command-V. I usually paste into a TextEdit window as an intermediate step to check the copied phrase, but you don't need to do this. So as an example, navigate to the Apple menu on the menu bar with VO-M or Control-F2, arrow down to "Software Update …", or any menu item that is announced with "ellipsis" at the end, use VO-Shift-C to copy the phrase, then paste it into a TextEdit window. If you press Command-Left arrow to move your insertion point cursor to the beginning of the line, then hold down the Shift key to select, and start tapping with the Right arrow key, you'll hear VoiceOver announce the characters one by one as you select them, until you get to the final ellipsis. At this point you can use Command-V again to copy your highlighted phrase, and paste it into the "Menu title" text field of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane of System Preferences. For Jürgen's question, I'll assume that he has the Skype application as one of his active apps. Then he could define a shortcut as follows: 1. VO-M or Control-F2 to the Apple Menu, and arrow down to System Preferences 2. Navigate to the Keyboard menu and select the Keyboard Shortcuts tab 3. Navigate to the "Shortcuts Categories" table and interact, then select "Application Shortcuts" and stop interacting 4. Navigate to the "Add an application shortcut" button and press it (VO-Space) 5. In the dialog window, VO-Space on the "All Appliciations" pop up button and set the application to "Skype". 6. Command-tab to switch to Skype in order to navigate to the menu bar, arrow down to the command you want that ends in "ellipsis", and use VO-Shift-C to copy the phrase to the clipboard; then press escape to dismiss the menu and Command-tab back to your System Preferences dialog window. 7. Paste the menu command into the "Menu Title" text box with Command-V 8. Navigate to the Keyboard Shortcut text box and type in the shortcut combination you want to use. 9. Press (VO-Space) the "Add" button to exit the dialog window. 10. Command-W to close the System Preferences window. Incidentally, I found a reference to setting up a "Call with Skype" service at this web page: • “Call With Skype” Service for Mac OSX (September 6, 2011): http://paulmaiorana.com/notes/2011/09/call-with-skype/ Haven't tried this, but from the description the author put together a Service option using Automator so that he could highlight a phone number from any application (e.g., a mail message, or a contact in your Address Book), select "Call with Skype" as a Services menu option from that application's menu bar services, and have that number dialed without having to paste it into the dial pad. For Lion users, you don't need to use the command line of Terminal to put the "Call with Skype" file into the ~/Library/Services/ folder. From FInder, use the Command-Shift-G "Go to folder" shortcut, and then type or paste in: ~/Library/Services/ into the dialog window to navigate to this folder. You can also get the freeware Tinker Tool application from: http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html This application lets you unhide your Services and Preferences libraries, and configure other settings to your liking. You should also be able to set up a Services menu shortcut similar to the method outlined above for setting an Application shortcut. One of the nice features of Services is that they show up in the menu options of all applications. In most instances, your Service menu options won't appear until you select some item for the Service to operate upon. For example, if I wanted to save the instructions in this post as an audio track in iTunes, I could select the text in this message, then navigate to the Services menu of my current application, Mail, by using either VO-M or Control-F2 to move to the menu bar, right arrow to the application, down arrow to its menu, press "s" to move to "Services", then right arrow to the submenu to select "Add to iTunes as Spoken Track". (In actuality, if I wanted to do this I would insert the unspoken control characters for speeding up the speech rate at the beginning of my selection. such as "rate 300" (without quotes) surrounded by a double set of brackets like this: [[rate 300]] Then the audio track for the selection will be spoken at the specified rate when saved as a spoken track in your music library.) If you want define a Services menu shortcut, the quickest way to navigate to this option in System Preferences (the first 3 steps of the earlier instructions) is to navigate to the "Services Menu" of any application as just described, and select "Services Preferences …" at the end of the Services submenu (Command-Down arrow to go there). That takes you directly to the "keyboard shortcuts tab" in System Preferences with "Services" already selected and highlighted in the "Shortcuts Categories" table. Then you can navigate to the Table of Shortcuts for the Services menu, interact, VO-right to the names column, find the service you want, tab to the field for the shortcut and type in a combination, then make sure this item is checked for inclusion in the Services menu (VO-Space in first column). I found that when I checked the box first, it got unchecked as soon as I typed in the shortcut key combination. This didn't happen in Snow Leopard, but seems to be true for me in Lion. Sorry for the long explanation. One further note for Dean. Using keyboard commander shortcuts is a nice feature, but because you are restricted to selecting one modifier key, such as the right Option key, in combination with a letter, you can quickly run out of shortcut combinations. Using the general Keyboard Shortcuts tab in System Preferences lets you define shortcuts with more key combinations. And a final plug for one of my favorite Services Menu shortcuts: "New TextEdit Window Containing Selection". This is not checked by default in the Services menu options. The reasons that this is a terrific option for VoiceOver users is that because it strips out non-text characters and controls you can use it to automatically read embedded tables and lists in Pages and documents from other word-processor software that otherwise don't get announced. Just select all with Command-A or select a page, and use this Services menu option, which is worth assigning a shortcut to (I use Command-Shift-W). I've also used it to read some web pages that are not accessible because of bad HTML coding. And if you read non-Roman characters in other languages, or special characters for math formulae, TextEdit is the most flexible place to do your reading, too. HTH. Cheers, Esther On Feb 13, 2012, at 2:26 AM, Jürgen " wrote: > Hi Dean, > > thanks for your detailed diskription. But I didn't meant the keyboard > commander in VoiceOver. > > What I'm looking for is the keyboard section in system preferences. There you > have the possibility to create shortcuts for each command in a programs > menue. Just look at it and try it out. It's wonderful. > > But it's not possible to simply give a shortcut to a command with an elipsis > at the end. So again: > > Can anyone give me a hint how to create shortcuts for such commands in the > menue? > > I'm not sure about it but I think it might have been Esther who posted an > information to that. > > Thanks and all the best > Jürgen -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacVisionaries" group. To post to this group, send email to macvisionaries@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to macvisionaries+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
