Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
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Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
Re: Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
On Windows the Alt key is used to access menus, but this is not normal on Mac OS X. Having Option (Alt) associated with menus conflicts with the more typical use for typing special characters.
I use keyboard layouts for IPA and for indigenous orthographies which require pressing Option in addition to various keys, e.g. Opt+k for <ḵ> and Opt+e for <ə>. Most Mac OS X keyboard layouts have similar designs. Since Elan expects to use Option as a command key, whenever I press Opt+e to type <é> or <ə> the Edit menu opens and whenever I press Opt+a to type <á> or <ɐ> the Annotation menu opens. To close them I must then press Escape, hoping that the character I typed was not discarded. This is extremely annoying.
Re: Re: Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
Yes, trying to maintain a multi-platform application sometimes leads to undesirable side effects.
We'll see if this can be changed easily and without having to spend too much time on platform specifics.
In the meantime you can try this to get rid of this behaviour:
Copy the file ElanLanguage.properties from the "locale" folder in the ELAN install folder to
<user_home>/Library/Preferences/ELAN
and remove all entries starting with MNEMONIC (in e.g. TextEdit).
Next time you open ELAN the Option key shouldn't open a menu anymore.
-Han
Re: Re: Re: Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
Unfortunately this doesn’t work. I also tried editing the main file in the ELAN application folder, and that didn’t solve the problem either.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
Peculiar, it works on my Mac. At least if I close the window(s) that were open when switching to the Custom language. None of the menu's open with the alt-key after that (Mac OS 10.5.8, Java 1.5.0_24).
-Han
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Mac UI: Option/Alt shouldn’t activate menus
I don’t have a decent explanation as to why, but it has suddenly started working after having not done so for some time. I’ve run and exited Elan a few times, and I’ve rebooted a few times, but today it’s suddenly decided to start working properly. I now don’t have menus popping up when I press Opt+something.
Thanks!
Third party update, regular expressions
