Editable list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys.

[ChrisGreaves]

KeyboardShortcuts_01.png (33.2 KiB) Viewed 3452 times

Under Tools, Options, Keyboard we find a means of scrolling through a list of shortcut key combinations assigned to various menu items and other derived items.
I cannot find a means to deliver an editable list of currently ASSIGNED shortcut keys. Such a list will of course vary from one user to another. Nonetheless Everything must have access to such a list, otherwise how can Everything spring into action when a specific shortcut key combination is used?

Of greater concern is that I cannot find a means to deliver an editable list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys. Such a list will of course vary from one user to another. It will be the negation of the list of shortcut keys ASSIGNED in the user’s system.

Initially the available set would be the eight activator combinations of Ctrl+Shift+Alt against the 26 alphabetics, ten decimal digits, and a motley collection of punctuation characters. Not to mention the Function keys. from this list Everything will hard-wire its own set of assignments. The remaining combinations are up for grabs by the individual user.

Why should a user care about a list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys? Because the user, being convinced of the accuracy of shortcut keystrokes and the consequent reduction in time chasing errors, will want to assign shortcut keys to every square inch of Everything.
To that end the user needs to plan the assignment of shortcut keys, and without an accessible list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys, such planning is nigh on impossible.

Once a list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys is available, I shall start making proper use of shortcut keys, and the week after that I will be back here asking for a feature to map an existing set of function keys to a different activator. Thus:

Code: Select all

Please map the set of ten keys Ctrl+Alt+[0-9] to a new set Ctrl+Shift+Alt[A-J]

and to that end I will need yet again a list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys.

Then the week after that I shall ask that Everything, on being loaded, send me a list of key conflicts between those found assigned (in the INI file?) and those pre-empted by Everything.exe.

One last question before afternoon-tea time: A really neat feature would be to allow the user to re-assign Everything's mappings, so that the user can optimize shortcut key assignments to his/her own end. After all, there may be amongst us an absolute WIZARD at shortcut keys who finds that the path to world domination is blocked by Ctrl+Alt+Shift+<F7>.

Thanks, Chris

[horst.epp]

Enter the following search
about:keys

[ChrisGreaves]

Enter the following search
about:keys

Thanks Horst.

Untitled.png (11.85 KiB) Viewed 3443 times

Supposing that this did yield a list of ASSIGNED shortcut keys, (Which it does once I press the <Enter> key ) how then would I go about generating a list of AVAILABLE shortcut keys?
It is the list of AVAILABLE shortcut keys that the user needs to make a plan of assignment.
Plus the managed re-mapping functions.
Cheers, Chris

[horst.epp]

This the the list of all current defined shortcut keys
which also contains any functions you may have remapped.

What do you mean with a list of all available shortcut keys ?
Thats a useless request for me, as there can't be such list.
You can use any free hotkey, which is not defined in Everything or global by other tools,
and assign it to one of the Everything functions.

[ChrisGreaves]

Thats a useless request for me, as there can't be such list.

Horst, there MUST be (not can be) such a list and it can be fabricated by Everything. Please read my initial post. Everything MUST have a list of assigned keys, and it must know what combinations are the theoretical set (or at least the set which Everything chooses to honour). Subtract the assigned from the theoretical available set and you have the unassigned keys.

You can use any free hotkey, ...

Now we are getting somewhere!
In your next post please tell me which shortcut keys are "free" on my HP15 laptop. Not the method to determine the set of unassigned keys, but the actual keys themselves.
Everything is capable of that, and you know how to use Everything, right?
Thanks, Chris

P.S. just because one person doesn't have a want for something is no reason why someone else might have a need for that thing. C.

[horst.epp]

Thats a useless request for me, as there can't be such list.

Horst, there MUST be (not can be) such a list and it can be fabricated by Everything. Please read my initial post. Everything MUST have a list of assigned keys, and it must know what combinations are the theoretical set (or at least the set which Everything chooses to honour). Subtract the assigned from the theoretical available set and you have the unassigned keys.

You can use any free hotkey, ...

Now we are getting somewhere!
In your next post please tell me which shortcut keys are "free" on my HP15 laptop. Not the method to determine the set of unassigned keys, but the actual keys themselves.
Everything is capable of that, and you know how to use Everything, right?
Thanks, Chris

P.S. just because one person doesn't have a want for something is no reason why someone else might have a need for that thing. C.

Everything has a list of its assigned keys (about:keys), it can't have a list of global keys assigned by other tools.
There are tools which try to give you such a list and most of them fail.
I don't see the typical Everything user trying to make hundrets of short cuts.
So whats the real problem of taking the about:keys list and try to assign the few more shortcuts
for Everything functions, even by trial and error.
Btw. I run a lot of tools which also have shortcuts but none of them provides a list of all system wide assigned keys.
As I wrote above, only a few specialized tools are trying to dot it,
why should Everything do the same ?
That would be wasting programming resources blocking updates of much more importand Everything functions.

[void]

Everything uses the RegisterHotKey API to set a global keyboard shortcut.

There's no API to get a list of active hotkeys.
There's weird quirky ways you could call RegisterHotKey to get a list, but this is not something Everything will do.



A hotkey is registered to the program that first calls the RegisterHotKey API.



There is a registry option to disable system Windows hotkeys.

Hotkeys



Current Everything keyboard shortcuts are listed under Tools -> Options -> Keyboard.

You can customize keyboard shortcuts pressed from within Everything to anything you like from Tools -> Options -> Keyboard.
Old assignments are removed when assigning a new keyboard shortcut to a command.
Note: Hotkeys will override these keyboard shortcuts.

As horst.epp mentions, a simple list of current Everything keyboard shortcuts can be shown with about:keys + ENTER.

A complete list of the default keyboard shortcuts can be found here:
Keyboard Shortcuts

[ChrisGreaves]

There's no API to get a list of active hotkeys.

Thanks Void; this I understand. Everything cannot be responsible for shortcut keystrokes assigned through other applications, or by Windows itself.

But consider someone working in Everything who is planning to speed up work with a well-reasoned/chosen set of shortcut keys.
Such a plan will involve determining (a) what commands warrant shortcut keys and (b) what shortcut keys have not yet been assigned to Everything functions to date. It is the list of "Not-yet-assigned-to/by Everything set" I mean here.

... a simple list of current Everything keyboard shortcuts can be shown with about:keys + ENTER.

Thanks for this, too, but as a user who plans, I am looking for a set of all shortcut keys not yet assigned to commands in Everything, because that is the set from which i can plan my new assignments.

As a programmer I am capable of taking the assigned set from

about:keys + ENTER

and subtracting that set from the set of all possible shortcut keys. This set is formed by a combination from (this crudely prepared) set:-

keyboard Shortcuts_01.png (15.49 KiB) Viewed 3397 times

For my own use I might dis-allow wheel movements, and perhaps disallow some combinations. Ctrl+Shift+Alt is not a favorite manipulation! Likewise I might disallow (for myself) all Ctrl+<letter> combinations as too likely to be in conflict with Windows traditions (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X, Ctrl+V and so on).
That done it is a straightforward task (in Word/VBA even) to generate a list of candidates for use by the planner.

I do not want to argue this to death, so I will leave it at that. I know that not everyone plans how to customize an application, but I do believe that planning assignments to shortcut keys will reap benefits for the user.

Thanks, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

To that end the user needs to plan the assignment of shortcut keys, and without an accessible list of currently AVAILABLE shortcut keys, such planning is nigh on impossible.

Thanks to shodan's question, I was motivated to rewrite my four sections on "Filters", "Bookmarks", "Macros", and "Shortcut keys" into one module "Filters Versus Bookmarks. Which?".
That flung me headfirst, again, into a means to plan shortcut key assignments en masse.

Attached is a simple Word2003/VBA program which satisfies me (and shows how easy it is to implement)
Cheers, Chris

[ChrisGreaves]

Sunday, May 28, 2023

Old assignments are removed when assigning a new keyboard shortcut to a command.

Hello Void. Once again I may have misunderstood.
I start 1347a with an existing Filter “NotTilde” user-assigned to the combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+2.
In the process of creating a new Bookmark “Section02” I try to assign the combination Ctrl+Alt+Shift+2 to this bookmark and, of course, am refused as shown in the Screenshot below:-

Untitled.png (9.83 KiB) Viewed 2690 times

(1) What is meant by Old Assignment here. My original assignment of Ctrl+Alt+Shift+2 is not being removed. Perhaps because I am crossing a boundary between Filter and bookmark?
(2) In 1.6 might these pop-up captions be augmented by a common style of Yes/No/Cancel message-box?
Thanks, Chris

[void]

Currently, the user will need to manually resolve conflicting filter/bookmark keyboard shortcuts.

I have on my TODO list to clear existing keyboard shortcuts when adding a new filter/keyboard.

Thank you for the suggestion.