I’m trying to create a keyboard shortcut to move the cursor (aka caret) to the start or end of the current line, but I can’t work out what such a command is called. Does anyone know? Or does this function not exist in Scrivener? (In Word these functions are called ‘StartofLine’ and ‘EndofLine’.)
(I’m not talking about extending a selection to the start or end of the line, just moving the cursor without any text selection.)
on a PC you can just hit the Home or End buttons. And you can use… is it Alt+cursor?
Yes, just found that it’s Home and End after an internet search, and came back to post, and saw your reply – thanks. (What’s Alt+cursor?)
Is it a Scrivener function, though, or a Windows one? Because I can’t find any keyboard shortcut that uses Home or End, and if I test by trying to replace another function with Home or End, I don’t get the red text which indicates that this keyboard sequence is already taken. (I’d like to change the key sequence for these functions to Alt-Left Arrow and Alt-Right Arrow, which is what I’ve used for years on word processors. Using Home and End are far too slow for me.)
I meant Alt-arrow… 
It used to work a few years back in Windows, as far as I can remember.
Home and End aren’t combinations of other key presses – they are their own separate keyscan codes. Windows should be universally interpreting them in system-provided text widgets, and of course Qt4 – the framework used by Scrivener for Windows – should as well.
I just switched over to my Windows 10 and Windows 7 systems and tested. Home and End work as expected, but Alt-Left and Alt-Right don’t do anything in regular text editors.
Callith, welcome to the forums. I don’t mean to be rude, but are you new to Windows-based computers? Just about every program in every version of Windows (and before that DOS) that I have used going back over 30 years has used the Home and End keys to move the cursor to the beginning and end of the line. The one exception would be programs that only display text rather than writing it–Web browsers, for instance, in which Home and End may go to the beginning and end of an entire page or document.
I’ve been on Windows computers for many years. But whenever I have started using a word processor or similar program I have always changed the key settings for those functions straight away to Alt-Left Arrow and Alt-Right Arrow, because I always found the default key settings – and I do now remember that Home and End are often used on Windows programs for this – less quick to access, and also because that’s what I’m used to. I don’t know where I got this from, perhaps from using Macs a long time ago, or Amigas before that.
Very interesting. I apologize for not reading your posts more carefully.
I do love customizing keyboard functions. I had to get rid of Scrivener’s use of Alt+Left/Right Arrow to display or hide the formatting tools; that was just too counterintuitive, since I’m used to using those combinations to move backward and forward through Web pages. Since you’re used to using them to get to the beginnings and ends of lines, I imagine they must get in your way too.
To answer your actual question:
I suspect that the Scrivener programmers did not think that this function, so universal in Windows, would be reassigned by anyone. I’m sure they could include it in the list of assignable functions. In which case, your question basically becomes a feature request. Let’s see if they’ll take it up.
Okay, seems like a Windows function rather than a Scrivener function. I’ll submit a feature request.