Creating custom shortcuts

[mipi]

Hi, I do have a question about creating my own shortcuts:

To filter a Top Note in chord I set a double shortcut OptionQ, Option1
To filter a second one - OptionQ, Option2 etc…

Works great!

To filter a first Down Stem Voice - OptionD, Option1
To filter a second one - OptionD, Option2 etc.

Works great again!

Unfortunately I was not able to set up a similar shortcut for Up Stem Voices:
OptionU, Option1 or OptionU, Option2 doesn’t react at all.

What I am doing wrong? The System doesn’t warn, that these shortcuts are reserved for some other actions. Even OptionU or Option1 separately. Thank you for your help

[MarcLarcher]

Make sure that option U does not trigger a “dead-key” or diacritic accent. I cannot use shift-alt-1 on my mac because it’s for ´ accent (spanish accents or acute accents in French). On my machine, your thread makes me discover alt-u gives me the most sought after º, which is the real glyph for nº (o superscript), but on your language it may be something else (umlaut?)…

[pianoleo]

Yep, on my British English keyboard it’s a diaeresis (aka umlaut). Dorico won’t warn me, because Dorico’s not using that shortcut for anything else.

[mipi]

Thank you for your answers. On my Macbook Pro I do have a german keyboard.
AltU produces ¨
Alt1 produces ¡
Any way none of these 2 combinations produces an accent ´
I have heard about dead-key, but I am not sure I understand what exactly does it mean - I guess its a key which cannot be set as a shortcut. How can I find out which key on my keyboard is a dead-key? Would you help me to understand please? Google didn’t unfortunately…

[pianoleo]

A dead key is a key that doesn’t type a character; it provides some sort of accent or diacritic that is then applied to the next letter typed. A bit like how in Dorico step entry, if you type 6 you won’t get an actual crotchet/quarter on screen until you type a pitch.

I’m not in front of a mac just now, but when I am I’ll endeavour to find a way of viewing dead keys. It IS possible to effectively turn these off, using a third-party app such as Karabiner.

[mipi]

Thank you pianoleo. Trying to understand. When I type AltU, my keyboard does produce a sign ¨, as well as Alt1 produces ¡. So they cannot be dead-keys, as they do type a character. Thats why I cannot understand why these shortcuts doesn’t work in Dorico. An information how could I find out which keys or keys combinations are dead-keys on my Mac would be very helpful. Thank you again for your friendly support.

[pianoleo]

Go to System Preferences > Keyboard, then navigate to the Input Sources tab (I don’t know what this is in German, but it’s probably the fourth tab along). Then tick Show Input in menu bar.

You can then close this dialog.

Then click the flag to the left of the clock in the menu bar - it’s presumably a German flag - and click Show Keyboard Viewer.
Any key that shows as orange is a dead key. Then try holding down the Alt/Opt key. You’ll see that the U key is orange, and thus a dead key.

Regardless of what you think you see, Alt/Opt+U does not type a character. Depending on what program you’re in it might display a diaeresis/umlaut, but it will not actually leave a diaeresis/umlaut in place until you type an appropriate letter (such as a u or an e).

[Vaughan_Schlepp]

Just in case you’re interested, the term ‘dead key’ came into existence during the era of ‘analog’ typewriters which would, after every keypress, automatically shift the carriage to the left in preparation for typing the next letter. When they introduced diacritics, instead of adding a whole new set of keys, making the keyboard large and unwieldy, they created keys for the diacritics and these keys wouldn’t advance the carriage, so you could type your diacritic first and then the letter, which would superimpose the two.

[mipi]

Thank you very much for your answers and patient. They are very helpful. Please allow me to ask you one more question. pianoleo, I understand - in German keyboard such combination like altU wont work, because it is a dead-key. I checked it on my Mac as well - your luxurious tutorial was very helpful.

Any way, I use quite often a custom keyboard layout (I called it LT), which I set up few years ago my self using software Ukelele. It is based on a German default but it contains all Lithuanian characters I need for my daily work. A keys combination AltU on this custom layout produces a Lithuanian character “ū” ans it is definitely not a dead key. The problem is, that Dorico is not able “to see” this custom keyboard at all. Is there a way to tell Dorico to use it? Thank you very much

[pianoleo]

I don’t believe there’s a way of telling Dorico to use your Lithuanian keyboard setup. This is quite likely to be down to limitations in the Qt framework in addition to Dorico-specific limitations. You’ll need to think of a different shortcut.

[mipi]

Thank you pianoleao, i did it already😊 Tank you for your help

[Romanos401]

I think it would depend on your OS. In Mac you can switch between different languages via the properties panel. When you switch, your physical characters don’t match the digital ones; for instance, you can switch to a different language or Dvorak, and the programs will receive the codes you’ve switched to. Not sure if this works on windows. Hopefully what I just typed makes sense… I’m tired lol.

[mipi]

Dear Romanos, I am on a latest macOS…But I am not sure what you mean…

[MarcLarcher]

What he means is that it is very easy with MacOS to change the keyboard layout — so that you can easily access some foreign language letters (such as Czech or Russian, or Unicode) with a simple key binding. Not sure how that could solve your problem though (you have two keyboards connected at the same time, right?)

[pianoleo]

No, he has one keyboard. He’s used Ukelele to remap some of his keys, on his German keyboard, in order that he can use Lithuanian accents/diacritics. As far as I know it’s not possible to tell Dorico that your keyboard layout (and mapping) doesn’t match the English/German/French/Portuguese/Spanish/Japanese/Russian/Simplified Chinese standard layouts. I may be wrong, of course.

[mipi]

I am sure, you are right, pianoleo. Dorico recognises standard Layouts only.

[Kim_Bastin]

@pianoleo

No, he has one keyboard. He’s used Ukelele to remap some of his keys, on his German keyboard, in order that he can use Lithuanian accents/diacritics. As far as I know it’s not possible to tell Dorico that your keyboard layout (and mapping) doesn’t match the English/German/French/Portuguese/Spanish/Japanese/Russian/Simplified Chinese standard layouts. I may be wrong, of course.

I’m not sure you are right. I use a very non-standard, self-designed English layout, with e.g. ‘ ’ “ ” directly available, and Dorico has no problem at all with it: it just registers the character that is returned when a key is pressed. Problems might arise if the keyboard layout was not properly registered with the OS. — However, this is on Windows 10, and the Mac OS may behave differently.

[mipi]

Thank you for your suggestion. I do think, my custom layout is properly registered. I can see it nearby the standart layouts in macOS keyboard setting. Anyway Dorico “sees” just standard once.

[Romanos401]

You can, within MacOS activate multiple keyboards via the general preferences pane. Then, using the status bar, you can change between those layouts. When you change the layout, and press a key, it will register based on whatever virtual keyboard you are telling the OS to use (at a system level).

Here’s my default American English keyboard:

I clicked the plus icon and added ABC AZERTY keyboard:

Now I can navigate to the status bar to switch between them at will. You could use one keyboard normally but quickly switch to another whenever you’re in Dorico. I bet you could even make a KB maestro script to switch whenever you open/close Dorico.

Switching actually changes what characters my physical keyboard reproduces. If I switch to the AZERTY layout, my number 2 key produces é for instance. This would allow you to get around various language restrictions or change to DVORAK without having to buy a new physical keyboard.

[pianoleo]

Romanos, in the AZERTY Layout, does the number 2 key produce an é (the accent AND the letter e) or does it just produce the accent? If the latter, great - can you then persuade that key (within the AZERTY Layout) to function correctly as part of a Dorico keyboard shortcut? If the former, I don’t think your post adds anything here - we’re talking about how Dorico handles dead keys.