I want to add keyboard shortcuts to Mac OS X apps.

August 2, 2007 8:40 AM

I want there to be keyboard shortcuts for superscript and subscript in as many as possible of the applications I use (Mac OS X 10.4). How can I make this happen?

I want it to be the same shortcut in every application, so a system-wide solution would be best, and I think pretty much everything I use is Cocoa. Most essential are TextEdit, Keynote, Nisus Writer and MacJournal, but using the same keys in MS Word would be a boon. I just want it to be easy to type H₂O and NH₄OAc and Mg⁺⁺.

posted by nowonmai to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Sure, just go ahead and configure them that way. Word is completely configurable with regard to keyboard shortcuts, of course, and for the rest you can use the Keyboard preference panel to assign shortcuts to the menu items.
posted by kindall at 8:46 AM on August 2, 2007

I think Textexpander could do this (and more) for you, although not quite in the form of a keyboard shortcut, more a keyword.
posted by minifig at 9:31 AM on August 2, 2007

For most Cocoa apps, you can achieve things like this using DefaultKeyBinding.dict (more info here).

The actions you want to bind in this case are "superscript:", "subscript:" and "unscript:". Not particularly user friendly, but it should do what you want.
posted by narge at 9:45 AM on August 2, 2007

Er, yes that's embarrassing. The answer was 'just configure them that way'. The trick is: close the keyboard preference pane and relaunch the program you're trying to add shortcuts to before testing it, before deciding that it must be more difficult than it looks and Asking MetaFilter.
posted by nowonmai at 6:33 PM on August 2, 2007