So… I made a bunch of styles, cued them up to Option+ cmd+1, 2, 3, 4, etc. But I also kinda have dyscalculia, so I’m hard pressed to remember which of the shortcut numbers I cued them up for.
As it stands, Google Docs and Microsoft Word do show it in the pull down menu. But in Scrivener, in order to see it, you have to pull up the Styles panel to see what the shortcut is.
It’s a minor request, but would help my workflow tremendously and from what I understand of programming shouldn’t be that difficult to implement nor have much opposition since it’s in other programs already and doesn’t change the core functionality of the program at all, but does help boost the UX.
I know it’s a minor feature, but to me, has a large impact on making the styles customization more usable.
Quite apart from the apparent bug with the styles panel that I’ve just posted, my shortcuts appear on the Styles dropdown on the Formatting bar, on the Styles menu but not on the Styles Panel. My problem is they are in a mid-light grey on a light grey background which makes them almost impossible to read. Mind you, I use Ctrl+letter shortcuts (“Blockquote” is Ctrl-Q for instance) as they are easier to remember.
I’m running Scrivener 3.3.6 on an M2Pro Mac Mini with Sequoia 15.1. Are you running an older version of MacOS?
It’s Sequoia 15.1.1 It’s the standard white background.
Still would like them to show up in the menu’s pull down.
I choose standard colors for readbility primarily, and also because my inner graphic designer balks hard at people who choose strange color choices that are really hard to see.
And I did specify the pull down menu. Because pulling up the panel is too many clicks and waiting. I know my UX well.
But, as you can see and as you comment, they are of low visibility. I agree, they should be made more visible. But that is not Scrivener’s problem as the same is true of other Apps, including Apple’s own:
I think they only show up for you in Formatting Bar styles drop down because you’ve added bespoke shortcuts (from your screenshot, you have Ctl-1, Ctl-2 etc).
The built-in shortcuts (cmd-opt-1, cmd-opt-2) don’t appear in this dropdown, though they do in the Styles Panel and Format > Styles menu. I think this different may be what the OP is asking to be updated.
Thanks, I did point out in my original post that I use my own shortcuts, rather than those already set, as they have better mnemonic value. But the visibility problem is there. That said, looking into this further, System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Increase Contrast does make them more visible at the expense of a more in-your-face UI across the system.
As for why my shortcuts appear where they do or don’t, and the baked-in shortcuts appear where they do or don’t, I think only KB can answer.
It doesn’t actually matter much to me, as I use my shortcuts rather than the mouse. The only thing I’d like even better would be multi-character shortcuts à la NWP (e.g. Command-BIB = “Bibliography”) but that’s probably a wish too far.
I’d still prefer them to be cued by number because there are conflicts with other shortcuts I don’t want to have to deal with and I made a bunch of my own custom styles for the template I made.
Regardless of type of shortcut, I wish for them to show in the styles menu pulldown, and if the custom ones already show up, then the architecture to fix the code is even shorter to fix to make the defaults with numbers show up as well in the menu. It’s like only a few lines of code or deleting an if-then statement.
About a year ago, I downloaded Keyboard Maestro to try it out since so many people hear swear by it. It immediately started throwing up conflicts with shortcuts I already had set, and the thought of having to deal sort everything out was more than I could face, so I uninstalled it.
I currently have Better Touch Tool and Alfred installed. I have one shortcut in Better Touch Tool (courtesy of @nontroppo) and need to get my head round what that can do for me. As for Alfred, that I have to work out as well. If I can work those out and make use of them, I might have another go at Keyboard Maestro.
Apart from which, I have lots of other stuff on my plate, and at 79 time flies very quickly!
As you can see from my screenshot, my shortcuts appear in that dropdown. It looks as if the difference lies in using Opt-Cmd like you do, or Ctrl like I do. I’m not a coder, so I have no idea why they behave differently.
I sympathise – I’m a little behind you, but not so far that I can’t hear the sound as tempus fugit overhead…
I have a number of Keyboard Maestro palettes set up for Scrivener if they would help you. For example, this is my ‘Text’ palette. I press opt-t to get this – it only works in Scrivener, so I can reuse the trigger elsewhere if I want:
The right hand column gives the next trigger: so, all the sensible list/bullets are on opt-t 0, opt-t 1 etc.
If the trigger is repeated – e.g. c in the screenshot – then this brings up a sub-palette. So, opt-t c c invokes Capitalise selection, opt-t c l invokes Lower case and so on.
The palettes don’t stick around once you’ve hit the trigger, so once you know the letters you can just type them.
I also have palettes for Collections and for Miscellaneous functions. It’s easy enough to export them for you to try out if you want.
If I remember correctly I asked about adding shortcuts to the dropdown menu from the formatting bar many moons ago during the Scrivener 3 beta, and there was some reason KB didn’t want to add them, though that reason is lost in my memory.
Anyway a +1 for this feature request as I also forget style shortcuts; though I do tend to have the Styles panel permanently open which negates this somewhat. As it is undocked and always-on-top the styles panel can be a pain UI-wise, but it is the best place to manage styles.
As an aside, I also asked for the Styles panel to be an optional tab in the Inspector, so that we could have a docked Styles panel similar to most other apps (Word/LibreOffice/Keynote etc), but KB felt it was not a good fit as Inspector is document/project level rather than character level UI.
If I understand right, your request is a problem in the architecture of the program where it is cued to particular documents, rather than cued to the overarching program. Also might be a problem of visual clutter. Too many modules can be difficult to navigate program-wise.
But putting it into the drop down to what I observed of the architecture should be in the overarching programming, and thus doable, but I don’t have the physical program to be sure. But I kinda think it must be, if the custom ones without numbers do show up. It’s either adding or deleting a few lines of code, though I’m not professing this to be easy or simple, since there is still testing, etc. I’m merely pointing out there are other programs that have executed similar UX.
Right, this is a design decision by KB, he doesn’t want to clutter the menu, and I imagine the fact that custom shortcuts are visible is an oversight rather than a design choice…
