Setting styles from keyboard by alphabetic shortcut

[mikejt]

Another one of the (few) nice things about Word's UI is the ability to set the style of something using user-assignable shortcuts. It works like this:

1. select anything in a paragraph
2. use shortcut for "set para style" (in word, this is cmd-shift-s)
3. type full style name or shortcut
4. hit the return key

"shortcut"? ... well, Word allows style names to have the format "name1,name2,name3..." where the "namen" things are synonyms. Typically "name1" is the full name, and "name2" is the shortcut. So, for instance, in the usual Word workflow (such as it is), the base paragraph style is "normal,n", and you can set the style of the current paragraph to "normal" by typing shift-cmd-s,n,return ...

There are a number of shortcuts that are "standard", such as "h1" for header level 1 (including the "autonumber"), "h2" for header level 2, etc.

Sure was nice ... didn't have to remember non-intuitive numeric codes ... easy to set document standards

[zoul]

Paragraph style shortcuts do not help me much, because I insert most of the “non-standard” paragraphs with autotitles – I’d love to have keyboard shortcuts for autotitles. And I am not sure if I like the multiple-key shortcuts (like cmd-something and then something else), is there a way to make them easily visible and usable in the standard GUI? I do not know any Mac application that uses them, so it might be a better idea to stick with the standard one-combination shortcuts. Cmd-F keys would work perfectly for me and I think they are not so hard to remember. (It would be best if we could set our own shortcuts for styles and autotitles.)

[transalpin]

I am not sure if I like the multiple-key shortcuts (like cmd-something and then something else) ...
Cmd-F keys would work perfectly for me

On notebooks this is a multiple-key shortcut (Cmd+fn+F1).

It would be best if we could set our own shortcuts for styles and autotitles.

Exactly.

[Reiner]

I would prefer if the shortcuts would be totally user-definable.

[Mart°n]

On notebooks this is a multiple-key shortcut (Cmd+fn+F1).

You could set OS X to behave differently. Open System Preferences, select Keyboard & Mouse, then selecth the first tab “Keyboard” and check the first option (use F keys to control software features). Now the F-keys work the same as on a normal keyboard and you have to press fn to reach the OS X option (volume, brightness…)

It would be best if we could set our own shortcuts for styles and autotitles.

Exactly.

True.

[zoul]

I have created the poll for customizable keyboard shortcuts, so that we can vote there.