Working in Word I got in the habit of using Strikethrough during the editing process, crossing out but not deleting stuff that I’m thinking of deleting at a later revision. Scrivener has a strikethrough command in the Text menu and there is a keyboard command set (or whatever it’s called: “alt-command-minus”) next to it when you pull down the menu that supposedly should do the same thing. However, for me the keys don’t work – nothing happens. (It works fine from the pulldown menu). I’ve tried going into the Mac (Tiger) System Prefs and setting those or some other keyboard sequence for Scrivener, but nothing happens; there is no system pref in Scriv to do this. What am I missing?
I’m deep in revision of a large novel that I imported from Word, which contains a bunch of strikethrough passages; a key command to work with this would be much nicer.
I also have problems with keyboard shortcuts from time to time, reproducable. I was told that this cannot be, and indeed, no other apps cause these problems. But, Scrivener does in my case. In short: Yes, I experience similar problems, although I do not use strikethrough.
I cannot recreate this problem. Maria, I’m not sure what you mean, but the fact is that keyboard shortcuts are set via an Apple interface and there is absolutely nothing in code that has any control over this. Thus, it cannot be a bug in Scrivener because there is no code in Scrivener to cause it. None. Now, if I had accidentally set up two keyboard shortcuts that do the same thing, then one of them wouldn’t work. But this isn’t the case. Thus, the only explanation, I’m afraid, is that it is system-specific. (“Reproducible” only really applies when it is reproducible on more than one machine - if it only occurs on one machine, it proves nothing other than that it could be an issue with that machine. Sorry. )
It may be that you have something else installed that tries to use this particular keyboard shortcut system-wide.
Thanks for your note. I checked and find that on one of my Macs I am not able to make the strikethrough command work; on the other, it works fine. So it is apparently something about the one Mac, but I have no idea how to change it. Any ideas on where to troubleshoot it?
As for the standard Apple commands for this stuff, I did find in hunting around that in MacJournal, there is an entirely different command for strikethrough. So some software at least provides alternate means for doing it, which is interesting.
Sorry, I didn’t explain this part very well. There is no standard keyboard shortcut for strikethrough - I chose the one used in Scrivener. However, the way a developer assigns a keyboard shortcut to a menu command in an application is not done through any code. Apple have a program called Interface Builder which is used for designing and creating interfaces for Cocoa and Carbon programs. In this program, the developer just selects the menu item, types the keyboard shortcut key desired into a text field, and then clicks check buttons representing the modifier keys (command, shift etc) wanted. That is all a developer does to assign shortcut keys. So all I meant was that shortcut keys are assigned in the standard Apple way (even if different apps may have different shortcut keys), and that no code is involved. Because of this, it simply can’t be a code bug in Scrivener - that is, because there is no actual code controlling this (at least, not in Scrivener - any code is right at the core of OS X).
As far as where to look, I would take a look at your Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences to check to see if there is anything set to override this combination. If that is not it, do you have any programs that run in the background all the time? System hooks? Any services installed?
To get around it, you can always assign a different keyboard shortcut to strikethrough via Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences.
I can understand the problem, and I agree with the logic. In my case it is opt-G for grouping items, on the iBook and G5, which works in other applications. Like you, I cannot reproduce the behaviour, it sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t, but I could not find a system wide use of the short cut. So it seems that there is still something I have to learn about the Mac behaviour.
When I read my post from yesterday, I realised that it sound a bit “angefressen” (not nice), which was not meant like that, sorry.
Next time it doesn’t work, immediately open console.app (via Spotlight is quickest, as it’s buried in the Utilities folder). That way, you can see if there is a bug with the Group command. If an error gets written to console.app, that will indicate that it is a Scrivener bug; otherwise, it has to be a keyboard shortcut “weirdness”. Let me know if you find anything.
All the best,
Keith
Yes, thanks. It is the zoom command. On the Mac on which the Strikethrough command does not work, I have the Zoom feature turned on; on the other Mac (where Strikethrough works in Scrivener), zoom is not turned on.
Would that still mean that I should be able to find some other command that works for this via System Prefs? I did try that designating a different command for Scrivener, but it didn’t seem to work either.
Got it fixed. Indeed, all it took was using System Prefs to specify a command for it … the key was to find a command not already in use (the rather difficult command-alt-shift-S choice that MacJournal uses was already taken as a statistics finder in Scrivener; however, command-D was available and much easier anyway.) Once I put that in and did a restart of Scriv, it’s good.
Thanks for everyone’s help. Hope someone else finds this useful.
Be aware that cmd-D is used by Scrivener for the “Duplicate” command in the Documents menu, though. I have added it to my list of things to look at, as it is probably best for Scrivener to have a different default shortcut if it conflicts with a system shortcut. I’ll try to think of a better one for 1.04 - suggestions welcomed.
All the best,
Keith
Thanks, edmo, for the good tip. The fix worked for both my machines here also. Very happy-making for my wife and partner who uses strikethrough a lot in her workflow.
–Greg
P.S. Keith, I guess cmd-dash is most conformal with the italics, bold, etc. command group, but cmd-dash is probably already used for something cooler. So, if shift-cmd-dash (which I guess is really cmd-underline) is not taken, that would seem a sensible alternative. (Somehow that is the key combo I am used to typing, in fact. Probably a Word thing.)
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