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If someone could please help me.
I tried to make a shortcut key but was unsuccessful.
This is what I did.
I went into Apple's System Preferences
Clicked "Keyboard and Mouse"
Clicked "Keyboard Shortcuts"
Scrolled down to "Application Shortcuts"
Clicked on "+"
In the box selected Mellel
Menu Title: Table (as a test)
Shortcut Key: Control 1
Quit Mellel
Turned it on again
Next to the Table appeared Control 1 but when I tried to use it as a shortcut it didn't work.
Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong?
Thanks a lot,
Shevach

It seems, that Mellel doesn’t accept shortcuts with the Control modifier Key. If you change the shortcut to Comand (Apple) + T [for example] or Comand+Control+T, it should work.

Hope this helps.

Thanks a lot. This did the trick
Shevach

One problem I have found using OSX's keyboard shortcut assignments with Mellel is that you can not assign shortcuts for other menu items that are not in the main menu bar (at the top of the screen). For instance, I wanted a shortcut for "Show all invisible characters" that is found within a document window. (I now have one Control+Shift+Command+8. Keep reading to find out how I did it).

I have also lost at random all my shortcuts in the past (I have not been able to figure why), not only those that I programed for Mellel but for other programs that I have spent so much time entering them through System Preferences.

Also, in Mellel, if you enter a shortcut for a paragraph style, for instance, that does not have a corresponding entry in another style set, when you come back to the previous paragraph style the shortcut might or might not be there. Again, not very predictable.

To attempt to solve this, I have been using Menu Master by Unsanity. It is a haxie and some people have complained about problems it can cause in their system. So far, I have not been disappointed and it might well be worth the $10.00 US Dlls. Here is the link if you are interested: http://www.unsanity.com/haxies/menumaster

ps. Another option to fully customize Mellel shortcuts (or any other program) that I have tested and might prove to be more stable than Menu Master is Keyboard Maestro. It is $20.00 US Dlls. but it is more than a shortcut creator as you can program very sophisticated macros. Here is the link: http://www.keyboardmaestro.com/main/

I too use Menu Master and also iKey because many of Mellel's built-in keyboard shortcuts have never worked for me and I have found that keyboard shortcuts set through System Preferences often don't stick. But one thing I haven't managed to do is set a keyboard shortcut for the "Go to page..." command (which should really be accessible from the menu bar). Has anyone managed to do this?

Rolf

Could anyone tell me what is the correct syntax in the system preferences to divide submenus from the menus in order to get shortcuts to work?

Thanks in advance.

Reiner wrote:Could anyone tell me what is the correct syntax in the system preferences to divide submenus from the menus in order to get shortcuts to work?

You couldn’t distinguish between menus and submenus within the System Preferences window. The only thing you could do is to enter the exact name of the menu item you like to create a shortcut for. If you want to create a shortcut for Insert › Table of Contents, you have to enter “Table of Contents” in the appropriate “Menu” field in the System Preferences › Keyboard & Mouse › Shortcuts. If there are two menus (or a main and a sub-menu) with the same name, the first one will be chosen by the Mac OS (whichever the first one may be).

The syntax is … no syntax! You do not, as you might have expected – or at least: as I had expected –, type something like "Einfügen/Seitenzahl/Seitennummer" (in English this would be something like "Insert/Page Numbering/Page number") in the OS keyboard preferences and attach some shortcut to it. You just type "Seitennummer".

This is why no menu (sub or not) must have the same name.

When Mellel is not running you type EXACTLY the menu item's name in the OS keyboard preferences. For example, when you want to attach a shortcut to a special character like the Ohm symbol you have to type "Ω Ohm" ("[Ohm symbol][space]Ohm"). It took me a while to get there …

This way of just typing the name of just the one menu item you want is simpler than typing it's whole hierarchic structure but also does sometimes force the programmers to give some elements which are equivalents but only in different parts of the structure different names.

But the biggest downside of this method is the fact that you would loose every customized shortcut when you change the program or OS language.

Reiner wrote:Could anyone tell me what is the correct syntax in the system preferences to divide submenus from the menus in order to get shortcuts to work?

Thanks in advance.

You simply type in the submenu exactly as it appears in the program. For instance, to get a keyboard shortcut in Mellel to access the last item in this menu tree: Layout > Page Style > Regular & page, you would type 'Regular & page' (without the quotes) inside the 'Menu Title:' box in the Keyboard & Mouse selection for shortcuts in system preferences. For the shortcut, just place the cursor in there and place the key combination you want.

Remember that for the shortcut to take effect, you need to quit and restart Mellel (or whatever program you are adding or changing the shortcut on).

Hope this helps.

suavito wrote: When Mellel is not running you type EXACTLY the menu item's name in the OS keyboard preferences. For example, when you want to attach a shortcut to a special character like the Ohm symbol you have to type "Ω Ohm" ("[Ohm symbol][space]Ohm"). It took me a while to get there …

If you need (by any chance) the Ohm symbol (Ω), you could type “option + z” as this is shortcut already defined in Mac OS.

Thanks all of you. But sadly your hints doesn't help becausee I wanted to make a shortcut for export as rtf but now my shortcut wants to import a rtf. It is logical after all you wrote but that's a weak comfort.

So I will have a look at the other solutions.

Reiner wrote:Thanks all of you. But sadly your hints doesn't help becausee I wanted to make a shortcut for export as rtf but now my shortcut wants to import a rtf. It is logical after all you wrote but that's a weak comfort.

So I will have a look at the other solutions.

With Menu Master and Keyboard Maestro (and quite likely also iKey, I have not used it) you can assign a shortcut to many commands that would not be possible with the standard OS X method (though the Preferences panel). I just assigned in Mellel Command+R for Export to RTF and Command+Shift+R for Import from RTF and works great (I used Menu Master). See previous postings to get links of where to download demo versions of the software.

Cheers!

Reiner wrote:So I will have a look at the other solutions.

You can simply download the Interface Builder (comes as a part of the Apple development kit), open the MainMenu.nib from the Mellel package (Contents/Resources/<Language>.lproj/MainMenu.nib) and set the shortcuts there. It’s free and it earns You some hacking skill experience points :)

Thanks zoul for your brillant idea. No costs and something to learn? Perfect.