On Saturday 05 July 2008, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote: ... > > I have wondered about using an F key instead of a key combination. > > For example, there are some F keys that aren't used. I thought at > > one point I had found a way to make OOo listen after a keypress. > > In other words, I could type something like, say, F6 and it might > > trigger a macro that does nothing but listen for the next key until > > it gets a keypress. Then when it does, it dispatches the control > > to the appropriate macro. > > No, if it works, it would look more like this: > > You enter the text park and press Ctrl+F3, or something similar, and > then it replaces Park with something, and formats it. Certainly, this > can be done in a macro, but if the auto-formatting stuff can also do > this, then, well, it would be easier :-)
Okay, I completely misunderstood and was looking over auto-correct, then auto formatting, and finally, under AutoText found what looks like it'll work, the only catch is now to find the short cut so I can define these quickly. (If anyone has the API calls for OOo BASIC for this handy, they'd save me some time!) Basically I type in the text, then I highlight it and pick Edit->AutoText (CTRL-F3, as you said -- I should have looked up control keys instead of looking under subjects!). Then I can give it the name and a short cut. From then on, all I have to do is type the key for the short cut, then F3, and it inserts the text, including formatting. I thought this would require phrases or more than keystrokes. This works well for me for several reasons: 1) I don't have to redefine keystrokes, like CTRL-P for Parker or ALT-P or something else, so I won't lose any control keys, 2) No playing chords like I'm playing a piano, just one letter key (or number) and F3, which is easy to do, 3) I can set this up, once I find the OOo API calls for this, so each script has its own set of abbreviations. That makes it easy to import or copy the settings from one script to another if I'm writing a sequel or several scripts in a series. I still have to figure out the "override" rules since I noticed there are already some entries with letters that my entries overrode when using the same shortcut text. > > In a script you often have a lot of dialog, which means typing > > people's names at that place in the center of the page or with that > > widest margin 20 times or so in a page. > > I considered this with respect to scripts for puppets. I considered > storing names in fields so that I could instantly change a name > everywhere at one time. Why'd you drop the idea? It sounds promising. You might still have a problem when you have the name in a regular block of text, though. Is that why you dropped it? > > When I first started checking out OOo, I was concerned because OOo > > doesn't do actual margin changes without forcing a page break (a > > serious flaw, as I see it), so when I did early imports from Word > > Perfect, I'd get one line per page in many cases and it's only > > after the filter was created to import Word Perfect documents that > > the situation changed. > > I still think that you should use paragraph styles. I'm not using the right words, yes I have to use paragraph styles since OOo doesn't let you change margins within a page (a serious flaw as I see it that will likely never be fixed). Hal --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
