(For super-watchers my Topic and statement of the issue may seem familiar. This time it is a different issue from the one I raised last year. That was focussed on my short-lived switch to Windows hardware.)
I use lots of special symbols in my documents. Productive writing is enabled by smoothly continuous typing to keep up with the mental composition process generating the text.
No, I don’t remember your earlier thread (and you did not provide a link to it). What sort of support are you looking for with this post?
What sort of special symbols are we talking about? Do they require a change of font?
How are you handling your need for many symbols currently?
Are you familiar with the Keyboard Viewer? Here’s a screenshot of it while Â⌥ is pressed. The Mac keyboard has quite a few special characters built in by default, just a keystroke (with Âthe ⌥ modifier) away, and most (or all?) keystrokes are reprogrammable to other symbols at System Preferences/Keyboard/Shortcuts. If that’s not enough, I recommend Keyboard Maestro.
If you frequently use the same special symbols, defining keyboard shortcuts is likely the best answer. If you use a variety of symbols, or so many of them that you can’t remember that many shortcuts, another alternative would be to use markup in your text. Either LaTeX or Markdown markup, or simply a plain text string of your own (consistent) invention. Then you can use either the Project Replace or the Compile command to swap in the true symbols later.
If these special symbols are accented characters for words or phrases that you’re regularly using in your project, another possibility it to set up shortcuts for these words or phases.
For example, I have shortcuts set up via System Preferences > Keyboard > Text on my Mac. Those items are canned replies I use for texts or emails. I have a Mac and an iPhone, and my canned texts are shared between my devices.
For bigger chunks of text or for project-specific items that repeat throughout my writings–this could include character names, names with accent marks, or texts I’m citing–I have Rocket Typist.
It can be used with small chunks of text but also with multiple paragraphs.
Me, too. I use diacritics, special characters and keyboard glyphs. Too many to create individual shortcuts for. So I wrote Text Toolbox II, a free Keyboard Maestro palette with popup menus for each of them (the diacritics mimic Apple’s system approach that not every application implements):
Diacritics in action:
Special Characters with super/subscripts:
Keyboard Glyphs:
They’re accessible from a menu bar icon (or a hot key) and compatible with Scrivener (of course).
Very interesting. As are the other replies on this topic - which I posted many months ago and to which suddenly (for some unfathomable by me) reason I have suddenly received these recent responses.
The mysterious nature of Software Systems are forever beyond our ken.
The original post in this thread, @Padn, was just two days ago on Saturday, according to the forum date. If that’s any clue.
Probably my fault. I am always in a hurry and consequently make lots of elementary mistakes; especially on the keyboard. So when trying to create a new post I probably re-activated the old one. Although prompted in error, the new responses are useful; especially yours.
Thanks to everyone for their patience with somebody whose presence on-line is past the normal USE BY date.
Accessible how? I don’t see a menu, palette, or macro for them. The word “diacritics” doesn’t appear in the PDF included with Toolbox II.
Diacritics is explained on page 10 of the PDF. It’s also the last option on the menu, which appears on the menu bar when installed and an also be called by a hot key. If you have Keyboard Maestro installed. Diacritics can also be accessed with a hot key of their own (⌥`).
Here’s what it looks like from the menu bar:
Sorry, I didn’t scroll down far enough at your link, so all I had was the Literary Toolbox, not the Text Toolbox.
Thanks for all the hard work!
But I still don’t see a menu. That is, I see it in Finder but not in Scrivener.
Shift-F10 brings up the Text palette, but it’s too long to let me see everything. That’s easily fixed; I reduced the font size.
Worse, though, bringing up special characters puts it at the bottom of the screen like this:
(One of those was activated from the KM menu at the top, and it weirdly hangs around.)
I figured out what was causing all that (except the missing menu). Thanks again!
Click on the macro group name in the Keyboard Maestro editor and make sure your version of Scrivener is in the list:
The popup is keyed to your cursor position. I thought that would be a good idea for touch typists using a hot key but if you’re using the menu bar option, not so much. You can change the HTML Prompt window to a fixed position (try something like kmwindow="SCREENVISIBLE(Main,MidX)-150,SCREEN(Main,Top,20%),300,100" to get started).
NB: I should point out that Scrivener is one of those well-behaved apps that does recognize Apple’s system-wide scheme for entered diacritics (which is to hold down the vowel for the popup menu of options). the Keyboard Maestro macro discussed her provides a similar function (type the vowel then the hot key to get the options) which works in both well-behaved and clueless apps.
It is in the list. The menu is only a nice-to-have, not a necessity, but I’m curious what the problem could be.
I’m a touch typist, but I don’t use keyboard shortcuts a lot. I use a few shortcuts and a few KM palettes. I’ll try the fixed position option, and I’ll add your palette to a palette I already use in Scrivener.
I know. Anyway, I don’t use diacritics all that much, and when I do, TextExpander takes care of it. I’m more interested in your Special Characters palettes, which I think will be very useful!
Puzzled myself why you don’t see it on the menu bar. The Scrivener window itself is a focused window that triggers the option (here anyway).
But, as you say, you can just drag the macro you want from the group to whatever group you prefer.
Just for fun, I’d try removing and adding Scrivener again. There shouldn’t be a difference between our systems if we’re both using the current version and Scrivener politely does not include the version number (like Adobe products) in the name.
