I've used Igor on Windows for a few years but am currently working in OSX. One thing I can't figure out is how to access the help menu using a keyboard shortcut. Does anyone know the answer? Thanks.
The slightly older mac keyboards which have more than the 10 or so keys of the current mac keyboards have a help button. I use Windows keyboards with my macs since I care about my keyboard being functional more than I care about it being pretty, and Windows keyboards have an Insert key which seems to be pretty much useless on a Mac. So at one point a few years ago I figured out how to map the Insert key to be a Help key (since the Windows keyboard doesn't have a help key). Unfortunately, I do not remember how I did this (it wasn't in Igor) but it might be an option for you.
I actually discovered it by accident - one of those fishing trips where you try holding down Cmd and go through the keys one by one. Igor has some keyboard shortcuts displayed in the menus, but not help, which is probably the most important one besides save.
I actually discovered it by accident - one of those fishing trips where you try holding down Cmd and go through the keys one by one. Igor has some keyboard shortcuts displayed in the menus, but not help, which is probably the most important one besides save.
From displayhelptopic"procedure window shortcuts":
To insert a template
Type or select the name of an operation or function and press Shift-Help.
Control-click the name of an operation or function.
On Windows, the equivalent is Ctrl+F1, which works fine. Where is this mystical help key on the Mac? I can right click and get a menu from which to select the insert template option, but haven't got this keyboard shortcut to work.
From displayhelptopic"procedure window shortcuts":
To insert a template
Type or select the name of an operation or function and press Shift-Help.
Control-click the name of an operation or function.
On Windows, the equivalent is Ctrl+F1, which works fine. Where is this mystical help key on the Mac? I can right click and get a menu from which to select the insert template option, but haven't got this keyboard shortcut to work.
Apple "improved" their keyboards a few years ago by, among other things, removing the Help key. It's possible to remap another key to act as the help key using the Keyboard preference app.
Cmd-Option-Shift-QuestionMark will take you to the help topic in Igor Reference.ihf. Apple, in their further infinite wisdom, stole our shortcut Cmd-Shift-QuestionMark, so now it opens the help menu with the Spotlight item activated. So now we have no shortcut for entering a template on Macintosh.
@ aclight - As a newish and reluctant Mac user, could you give me any more clues how to do this (on Lion).
@ John - would it be possible to look at updating this then for those without a help key, or (to keep backwards compatibility) adding another key combination to act as this shortcut?
@ aclight - As a newish and reluctant Mac user, could you give me any more clues how to do this (on Lion).
When you have typed the command on the command line or in a procedure file, you can control-click on it to get a contextual menu that says "Help for ...".
In addition, go to your Preferences control panel. Open the Keyboard preferences. Go to the Applications sub-menu. Add Igor Pro as an application. Define your keystrokes accordingly. See the attached image. This is under Snow Leopard, but it should be similar enough in Lion. What I have is equivalent to control-shift-/, where shift-/ maps to "?".
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville
@ aclight - As a newish and reluctant Mac user, could you give me any more clues how to do this (on Lion).
I wish I could, but I cannot figure out how I did it, which is too bad because I'd like to set my home iMac up to work the same way.
Somehow, about 2.5 years ago, I figured out a way to remap my Insert key (I use a PC keyboard) to be the Help key. This is not an Igor specific thing-it works in all applications. However, looking through the Keyboard system preferences application, I don't see any signs of the remap there. I am using only one other extension that is related to keyboard remapping (DoubleCommand*), and that extension has no option to remap the Insert key to be the Help key.
So I suspect that I might have modified some plist file to get the remapping. I just tried Google to see if I could come up with anything but I couldn't.
* If you are used to Windows and forced to use a Macintosh for some reason, there are some extensions that will make you hate your computer a little less. I use DoubleCommand to swap the Cmd and Ctrl keys so that the key marked Ctrl on a windows keyboard (lower left corner) acts as the Command key and the Windows key acts as the Control key. The Alt key continues to act as an Alt key. That way you don't have to retrain your left hand to move in a very awkward way to activate most shortcuts (those that require the Cmd key). I also use another extension called USB Overdrive X to allow my 5 button mouse to work correctly. My 4th button is remapped to act as if Option-[ was pressed and my 5th button is remapped to act as if the "Forward" action was triggered. I have also remapped the home, end, page up, and page down keys in terminal to function as they should, not as Macintosh thinks they should.
Also note that Igor and many programming IDEs have options to allow the Home and End keys to act in the appropriate way (that is, beginning and end of current line). In Igor, go to the Misc->Miscellaneous Settings dialog and select the Text Editing Settings pane and set the keyboard navigation to use Windows conventions.
...* If you are used to Windows and forced to use a Macintosh for some reason, there are some extensions that will make you hate your computer a little less. ...
I hear with Mountain Lion, the Mac will only allow finger-painting-type input on its magic track-pads, and the keyboard will only be accessible as a virtual pop-up just like the iX devices (ie, hard-wired keyboards will be depreciated). :-)
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville
I hear with Mountain Lion, the Mac will only allow finger-painting-type input on its magic track-pads, and the keyboard will only be accessible as a virtual pop-up just like the iX devices (ie, hard-wired keyboards will be depreciated). :-)
I hope that is true. The sooner Macintosh dies as a desktop platform, the better (IMHO).
I hope that is true. The sooner Macintosh dies as a desktop platform, the better (IMHO).
Whereas Adam is generally a really smart guy, and it's good to have a Windows advocate on staff, it should be noted that sometimes he's just plain wrong...
Also note that Igor and many programming IDEs have options to allow the Home and End keys to act in the appropriate way (that is, beginning and end of current line). In Igor, go to the Misc->Miscellaneous Settings dialog and select the Text Editing Settings pane and set the keyboard navigation to use Windows conventions.
Awesome! Thanks! That's one of the annoying things ticked off (in Igor at least - still have different key combinations in e.g. TextWrangler). I've re-learned to select whole words on OSX using alt+shift+arrow, and then to cut/paste using cmd+c/v. This was very inconvenient compared with cmd+shift+arrow, then cmd+c. I seem to use this a lot in Igor.
USB overdrive is great, isn't it? The default cursor movement is awful and can't be tweaked to be satisfactory using standard preferences. I've got to say, I don't find the position of cmd a problem (and for simplicity have just learned the apple keyboard for now).
So, there's no plan to introduce a new key combination for insert template? I've got to work out how to remap a key to be "help" to use this shortcut? ;)
Doesn't seem worthy of a new topic, so I'll just add it here: how does one select multiple adjacent traces in the modify trace appearance dialogue?
On Windows, you click the first trace, hold down shift and click on the last one required, or left click a box over all those required. On OSX, CMD+A gets all of them, cmd+click works the same way as ctrl+click on Windows but I can't work out a hold-down key combination for an adjacent range.
Doesn't seem worthy of a new topic, so I'll just add it here: how does one select multiple adjacent traces in the modify trace appearance dialogue?
On Windows, you click the first trace, hold down shift and click on the last one required, or left click a box over all those required. On OSX, CMD+A gets all of them, cmd+click works the same way as ctrl+click on Windows but I can't work out a hold-down key combination for an adjacent range.
Groan... (face turns slightly pink)... This is an ancient dialog written to ancient Macintosh HI guidelines (sheepish grin).
Hold down shift, click on the first one you want selected, drag over the list. To select non-contiguous items, Cmd-click will add to the existing selection.
Hold down shift, click on the first one you want selected, drag over the list. To select non-contiguous items, Cmd-click will add to the existing selection.
Thanks! I never would have tried that (unintuitive) key-click-drag combination ;)
I've updated the thread title, in light of yet another difficulty with keyboard shortcuts:
displayhelptopic"procedure window shortcuts" Tells me "To find the selected text Press Command-Control-H."
I have selected some text, pressed cmd+ctrl+H and nothing happens. No dialog, nada. As with the insert template problem above, I can right click and achieve this through the pop up menu, but keyboard shortcuts are where it's at. I have to select the word, cmd+c, cmd+f, cmd+v and then I can find using the dialog. Very inefficient. Meanwhile on Windows.....ctrl+H works as intended.
Edit:
If I go to misc/miscellaneous settings.../text editing settings/ and check use 'cmd-H for "find selection" instead of cmd-e to enter selection', then cmd-h does what I'm trying to achieve. However, that still doesn't explain why cmd-ctrl-h doesn't (as far as I can tell, which admittedly may not be very far).
It looks like the Procedure Shortcuts help is out of date. I think Cmd-Ctrl-H was our original attempt to deal with the fact that Apple stole our Cmd-H shortcut to use for the Spotlight help (in OUR help menu!). But now we have moved to what has become a standard on Macintosh (at least in code-editing applications): Cmd-E enters the selection as the find text, then Cmd-G finds forward and Cmd-Shift-G finds backward.
Note that on Windows Ctrl-H still enters the selection and finds forward, Ctrl-Shift-H enters the selection and finds backward, Ctrl-G and Ctrl-Shift-G repeat the find forward and backward.
Sorry to derail this thread once more, it's too much to resist.
aclight wrote:
I hope that is true. The sooner Macintosh dies as a desktop platform, the better (IMHO).
Competition is good, so for that reason alone I prefer it to stick around. Also, you can have my mac when you show me a POSIX-compliant OS that I can actually use for my daily work (cygwin is not a valid solution). At present Linux is not a good answer for me (and yes – I've tried it, and actually use it for some specialized applications).
I wouldn't mind switching – there are many things that I dislike about Apple. But I see no benefits in switching to Microsoft.
Thanks John and Howard, cmd+e is good enough (for now ;)) now that I know what it does! It was just the step of going through the dialog that was really tedious.
741 - I'm with you. Now that I regularly use W7, OSX and Kubuntu, there are things I like and dislike about all of them. Knowledge of what another OS does better means I think they all suck!
Doesn't seem worthy of a new topic, so I'll just add it here: how does one select multiple adjacent traces in the modify trace appearance dialogue?
On Windows, you click the first trace, hold down shift and click on the last one required, or left click a box over all those required. On OSX, CMD+A gets all of them, cmd+click works the same way as ctrl+click on Windows but I can't work out a hold-down key combination for an adjacent range.
Groan... (face turns slightly pink)... This is an ancient dialog written to ancient Macintosh HI guidelines (sheepish grin).
Hold down shift, click on the first one you want selected, drag over the list. To select non-contiguous items, Cmd-click will add to the existing selection.
I've just noticed that the save waves dialog works in a "normal" fashion, and different to the modify trace appearance dialog. One can drag a box round several waves, or click one, hold down shift and click another to select all the intermediate waves (which is what I was trying to do in the issue quoted above). You can't however hold shift and then drag over the list as described above.
I know nothing about the implications of this request, but can we have some consistency between dialogs for future Igor releases? Wishlist item?
I know nothing about the implications of this request, but can we have some consistency between dialogs for future Igor releases?
Consistency costs extra :)
For the next major release of Igor, all dialogs are being refreshed. The individual controls should at least be consistent between dialogs, and we are making an effort to be as consistent as we can.
For the next major release of Igor, all dialogs are being refreshed. The individual controls should at least be consistent between dialogs, and we are making an effort to be as consistent as we can.
Alt+delete normally deletes the word to the right of the cursor, in the way that ctrl+delete does on Windows. How can I make this happen in the procedure/command window? I can't find a key combination using either Windows or Mac keyboard navigation conventions in Misc/Miscellaneous settings/Text editing settings.
TIA
Alt+delete normally deletes the word to the right of the cursor, in the way that ctrl+delete does on Windows. How can I make this happen in the procedure/command window? I can't find a key combination using either Windows or Mac keyboard navigation conventions in Misc/Miscellaneous settings/Text editing settings.
TIA
There is no shortcut for that in Igor.
Using Macintosh conventions you can do shift-option-right-arrow followed by delete.
Using Windows conventions you can do shift-Ctrl-right-arrow followed by delete.
October 18, 2011 at 04:20 am - Permalink
October 18, 2011 at 06:50 am - Permalink
I don't think I'd have ever found or tried that! Thanks.
October 25, 2011 at 08:36 am - Permalink
October 25, 2011 at 02:19 pm - Permalink
Help->Shortcuts
That menu item has no shortcut...
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
October 26, 2011 at 09:05 am - Permalink
From
displayhelptopic "procedure window shortcuts":To insert a template
Type or select the name of an operation or function and press Shift-Help.
Control-click the name of an operation or function.
On Windows, the equivalent is Ctrl+F1, which works fine. Where is this mystical help key on the Mac? I can right click and get a menu from which to select the insert template option, but haven't got this keyboard shortcut to work.
March 7, 2012 at 03:05 am - Permalink
Apple "improved" their keyboards a few years ago by, among other things, removing the Help key. It's possible to remap another key to act as the help key using the Keyboard preference app.
March 7, 2012 at 07:09 am - Permalink
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
March 7, 2012 at 10:24 am - Permalink
Ha ha, funny joke.
March 7, 2012 at 01:04 pm - Permalink
@ John - would it be possible to look at updating this then for those without a help key, or (to keep backwards compatibility) adding another key combination to act as this shortcut?
Thanks
March 8, 2012 at 06:09 am - Permalink
When you have typed the command on the command line or in a procedure file, you can control-click on it to get a contextual menu that says "Help for ...".
In addition, go to your Preferences control panel. Open the Keyboard preferences. Go to the Applications sub-menu. Add Igor Pro as an application. Define your keystrokes accordingly. See the attached image. This is under Snow Leopard, but it should be similar enough in Lion. What I have is equivalent to control-shift-/, where shift-/ maps to "?".
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville
March 8, 2012 at 07:48 am - Permalink
I wish I could, but I cannot figure out how I did it, which is too bad because I'd like to set my home iMac up to work the same way.
Somehow, about 2.5 years ago, I figured out a way to remap my Insert key (I use a PC keyboard) to be the Help key. This is not an Igor specific thing-it works in all applications. However, looking through the Keyboard system preferences application, I don't see any signs of the remap there. I am using only one other extension that is related to keyboard remapping (DoubleCommand*), and that extension has no option to remap the Insert key to be the Help key.
So I suspect that I might have modified some plist file to get the remapping. I just tried Google to see if I could come up with anything but I couldn't.
* If you are used to Windows and forced to use a Macintosh for some reason, there are some extensions that will make you hate your computer a little less. I use DoubleCommand to swap the Cmd and Ctrl keys so that the key marked Ctrl on a windows keyboard (lower left corner) acts as the Command key and the Windows key acts as the Control key. The Alt key continues to act as an Alt key. That way you don't have to retrain your left hand to move in a very awkward way to activate most shortcuts (those that require the Cmd key). I also use another extension called USB Overdrive X to allow my 5 button mouse to work correctly. My 4th button is remapped to act as if Option-[ was pressed and my 5th button is remapped to act as if the "Forward" action was triggered. I have also remapped the home, end, page up, and page down keys in terminal to function as they should, not as Macintosh thinks they should.
Also note that Igor and many programming IDEs have options to allow the Home and End keys to act in the appropriate way (that is, beginning and end of current line). In Igor, go to the Misc->Miscellaneous Settings dialog and select the Text Editing Settings pane and set the keyboard navigation to use Windows conventions.
March 8, 2012 at 08:30 am - Permalink
I hear with Mountain Lion, the Mac will only allow finger-painting-type input on its magic track-pads, and the keyboard will only be accessible as a virtual pop-up just like the iX devices (ie, hard-wired keyboards will be depreciated). :-)
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville
March 8, 2012 at 09:57 am - Permalink
I hope that is true. The sooner Macintosh dies as a desktop platform, the better (IMHO).
March 8, 2012 at 10:15 am - Permalink
Whereas Adam is generally a really smart guy, and it's good to have a Windows advocate on staff, it should be noted that sometimes he's just plain wrong...
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
March 8, 2012 at 02:16 pm - Permalink
... perhaps also a note to put the divergence of topic in proper perspective with a bit of humor ...
"Follow-ups are directed to alt.comp.sys.os.religion ..."
(which probably also means I am dating myself here)
--
J. J. Weimer
Chemistry / Chemical & Materials Engineering, UAHuntsville
March 8, 2012 at 04:59 pm - Permalink
Awesome! Thanks! That's one of the annoying things ticked off (in Igor at least - still have different key combinations in e.g. TextWrangler). I've re-learned to select whole words on OSX using alt+shift+arrow, and then to cut/paste using cmd+c/v. This was very inconvenient compared with cmd+shift+arrow, then cmd+c. I seem to use this a lot in Igor.
USB overdrive is great, isn't it? The default cursor movement is awful and can't be tweaked to be satisfactory using standard preferences. I've got to say, I don't find the position of cmd a problem (and for simplicity have just learned the apple keyboard for now).
So, there's no plan to introduce a new key combination for insert template? I've got to work out how to remap a key to be "help" to use this shortcut? ;)
March 9, 2012 at 09:37 am - Permalink
On Windows, you click the first trace, hold down shift and click on the last one required, or left click a box over all those required. On OSX, CMD+A gets all of them, cmd+click works the same way as ctrl+click on Windows but I can't work out a hold-down key combination for an adjacent range.
March 9, 2012 at 09:47 am - Permalink
Groan... (face turns slightly pink)... This is an ancient dialog written to ancient Macintosh HI guidelines (sheepish grin).
Hold down shift, click on the first one you want selected, drag over the list. To select non-contiguous items, Cmd-click will add to the existing selection.
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
March 12, 2012 at 09:20 am - Permalink
Thanks! I never would have tried that (unintuitive) key-click-drag combination ;)
I've updated the thread title, in light of yet another difficulty with keyboard shortcuts:
displayhelptopic "procedure window shortcuts"Tells me "To find the selected text Press Command-Control-H."I have selected some text, pressed cmd+ctrl+H and nothing happens. No dialog, nada. As with the insert template problem above, I can right click and achieve this through the pop up menu, but keyboard shortcuts are where it's at. I have to select the word, cmd+c, cmd+f, cmd+v and then I can find using the dialog. Very inefficient. Meanwhile on Windows.....ctrl+H works as intended.
Edit:
If I go to misc/miscellaneous settings.../text editing settings/ and check use 'cmd-H for "find selection" instead of cmd-e to enter selection', then cmd-h does what I'm trying to achieve. However, that still doesn't explain why cmd-ctrl-h doesn't (as far as I can tell, which admittedly may not be very far).
March 14, 2012 at 03:42 am - Permalink
Note that on Windows Ctrl-H still enters the selection and finds forward, Ctrl-Shift-H enters the selection and finds backward, Ctrl-G and Ctrl-Shift-G repeat the find forward and backward.
John Weeks
WaveMetrics, Inc.
support@wavemetrics.com
March 14, 2012 at 09:43 am - Permalink
Competition is good, so for that reason alone I prefer it to stick around. Also, you can have my mac when you show me a POSIX-compliant OS that I can actually use for my daily work (cygwin is not a valid solution). At present Linux is not a good answer for me (and yes – I've tried it, and actually use it for some specialized applications).
I wouldn't mind switching – there are many things that I dislike about Apple. But I see no benefits in switching to Microsoft.
March 14, 2012 at 10:13 am - Permalink
Actually they stole it for Hide Application.
I have made a note to fix the references to Cmd-H in the Procedure Window shortcuts help.
March 14, 2012 at 10:35 am - Permalink
741 - I'm with you. Now that I regularly use W7, OSX and Kubuntu, there are things I like and dislike about all of them. Knowledge of what another OS does better means I think they all suck!
March 15, 2012 at 04:54 am - Permalink
I've just noticed that the save waves dialog works in a "normal" fashion, and different to the modify trace appearance dialog. One can drag a box round several waves, or click one, hold down shift and click another to select all the intermediate waves (which is what I was trying to do in the issue quoted above). You can't however hold shift and then drag over the list as described above.
I know nothing about the implications of this request, but can we have some consistency between dialogs for future Igor releases? Wishlist item?
March 15, 2012 at 07:58 am - Permalink
Consistency costs extra :)
For the next major release of Igor, all dialogs are being refreshed. The individual controls should at least be consistent between dialogs, and we are making an effort to be as consistent as we can.
March 15, 2012 at 08:44 am - Permalink
Awesome!
March 15, 2012 at 08:53 am - Permalink
TIA
March 21, 2012 at 03:36 am - Permalink
There is no shortcut for that in Igor.
Using Macintosh conventions you can do shift-option-right-arrow followed by delete.
Using Windows conventions you can do shift-Ctrl-right-arrow followed by delete.
March 21, 2012 at 12:36 pm - Permalink