[trucmuche2005]

Hello ! :-)

This is my first post here. Please forgive my poor english... I'm doing my best :-)

I'm a new Mac user and I would like to customize the toolbar which appears when I compose a new email in Mail 5.2 (MacOS X Lion). For instance, I would like to have a button to indent the selected in one click : I don't like to have to make two mouse clicks to indent, since this is an operation that I often do...

Is this possible ?

Many thanks in advance !

Trucmuche

[bastion]

trucmuche2005, on 05 May 2012 - 06:36 AM, said:

Hello ! :-)

This is my first post here. Please forgive my poor english... I'm doing my best :-)

I'm a new Mac user and I would like to customize the toolbar which appears when I compose a new email in Mail 5.2 (MacOS X Lion). For instance, I would like to have a button to indent the selected in one click : I don't like to have to make two mouse clicks to indent, since this is an operation that I often do...

Is this possible ?

Many thanks in advance !

In general, you change the contents of the toolbars in Mac apps by control- or right-clicking on the toolbar and choosing the "Customize Toolbar..." command. A sheet will drop down and show you available items to put in the toolbar, and things that are already in the toolbar can be removed by dragging them out.

In the specific case of what you want to do, unfortunately you're out of luck. The customization of toolbars is limited to the commands and features that each application's developer has chosen to make available. You can't put items in there that represent arbitrary commands, scripts or whatever. That said, you do have the option of using the keyboard shortcut that's defined for the indent command. It may not be optimal, but you might find it at least preferable to the multi-level menu navigation you're doing now.

[trucmuche2005]

Thank you very much for your detailed answer ! Yes, I think that the best solution for now is to learn and use the keyboard shortcuts. I regret that the TAB key does not indent the selected text, this would be very easy (and this is the behavior of the TAB key in some text editors)... CTRL + SHIFT + > is quite more complicated than "TAB"... :-D

[bastion]

trucmuche2005, on 06 May 2012 - 07:48 AM, said:

Thank you very much for your detailed answer ! Yes, I think that the best solution for now is to learn and use the keyboard shortcuts. I regret that the TAB key does not indent the selected text, this would be very easy (and this is the behavior of the TAB key in some text editors)... CTRL + SHIFT + > is quite more complicated than "TAB"... :-D

The problem is that sometimes you actually want to put a tab in, so having that key increase indenting comes at a price.
Out of curiosity, what language is your system set to? In English it's Cmd-].
I believe you can assign your own shortcuts using the Keyboard module of System Preferences.

[trucmuche2005]

bastion, on 06 May 2012 - 08:49 AM, said:

The problem is that sometimes you actually want to put a tab in, so having that key increase indenting comes at a price.
Out of curiosity, what language is your system set to? In English it's Cmd-].
I believe you can assign your own shortcuts using the Keyboard module of System Preferences.

My system language is french.

I don't understand the "price" you mention... In some programs, if you use the tab key when no text is selected, a TAB character is inserted. But if you use the tab key when some words are selected, the entire line/paragraph is indented. I'm really loving this feature...

I didn't found where I should be able modify this shortcut in the keyboard module of system preferences... I found many other shortcuts, but not this one...

[bastion]

trucmuche2005, on 07 May 2012 - 07:53 AM, said:

bastion, on 06 May 2012 - 08:49 AM, said:

The problem is that sometimes you actually want to put a tab in, so having that key increase indenting comes at a price.
Out of curiosity, what language is your system set to? In English it's Cmd-].
I believe you can assign your own shortcuts using the Keyboard module of System Preferences.

My system language is french.

I don't understand the "price" you mention... In some programs, if you use the tab key when no text is selected, a TAB character is inserted. But if you use the tab key when some words are selected, the entire line/paragraph is indented. I'm really loving this feature...

The problem is that the behavior you describe is contrary to the way text-editing has worked on the Mac for the last 28+ years. If you press a key that enters data while a selection is established, the new data replaces the selection. It's a well-established standard behavior on the platform and Apple's not likely to deviate from it. In that context, the "price" to which I referred is the loss of a convenient way to do just what I described: Replace a selection with new typing where the first character - for whatever reason - is a tab.

Quote

I didn't found where I should be able modify this shortcut in the keyboard module of system preferences... I found many other shortcuts, but not this one...

Using the English labels:
Launch System Preferences.
Select "Keyboard."
Select the "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab.
Click "Application Shortcuts" in the left list.
Click the + button below the right list.
Choose Mail from the Application popup.
Enter "Increase" for the Menu Title field.
Enter the keystroke you want in the Keyboard Shortcut field.
Start (or restart) Mail.
You should see the standard shortcut sequence for the Format>Indentation>Increase command replaced by your new setting.

[trucmuche2005]

Thank you very much for your help !

I understand perfectly what you say, Bastion. Thank you very, very much ! I'm learning the Apple philosophy and there is many things that I appreciate.
But even if there is a philosophy, It's really important for me to let the user choose how he wants to use his tool, customize it for its own purpose, for his own job. I don't like to feel myself limited by what some engineers (or whatever) have decided for me...

I love this ability to define the shortcuts by application, this is very easy (when you know the technique ; thanks !)... But I would be very happy to be able to enter the "TAB" in this field. This would have been perfect... :-)

Never satisfied ? Me ? :-)

[bastion]

trucmuche2005, on 07 May 2012 - 10:43 AM, said:

Thank you very much for your help !

I understand perfectly what you say, Bastion. Thank you very, very much ! I'm learning the Apple philosophy and there is many things that I appreciate.
But even if there is a philosophy, It's really important for me to let the user choose how he wants to use his tool, customize it for its own purpose, for his own job. I don't like to feel myself limited by what some engineers (or whatever) have decided for me...

While I'm abstractly sympathetic to that position, I hope you understand that in reality there's only one way to escape it. That's to become a programmer, create replacements for every tool needed to create new software, and then use those home-brew tools to create every other program you ever use. That includes the OS itself. And then never interact with any outside resource. Every program, every file format, every communication protocol and every remote service involve countless decisions that engineers have made "for you." Or at any rate for the users of their product, and you decide for yourself whether you want to be one of those users. Nobody is going to make software for general release that is configurable in every possible way because it would be a huge amount of effort and time, and would - as a direct result of that configurability - be outright unusable to a large chunk of the prospective market.

I hope that didn't come across as harsh. It wasn't meant to. It's just meant to point out that for the most part you *are* willing to accept the decisions engineers have made. Every program you use has that characteristic, and the ones you use are those where the decisions aren't so onerous that they obviate the benefit of the app. And perhaps they're even in alignment with how you want it to behave so as a practical matter you don't even need each aspect of its behavior to be configurable.