Alt-something me! Give me keyboard shortcuts please!

December 6, 2007 10:29 AM

Is it possible to create a keyboard shortcut for a program that doesn't seem to have one?

I'm doing a bunch of work on coding qualitative interviews using a program called Atlas/ti. I can't seem to find any way to do coding (assigning codes to a quotation) without using the mouse. This is driving me crazy because I have tried to train myself to go without a mouse as much as possible. Having only done a small number of interviews, I can already see the shoulder/arm/wrist pain starting. I have miles of interviews to go.

I don't think this program does keyboard shortcuts (though I could be wrong! Maybe I'm wrong!). Is there any way to get around this? Any useful hacks that I don't know of? Ways to make a few button clicks into an Alt-something?

I know that I can write the developers a letter and encourage them to do this for future iterations but for the moment I need to keep on coding. What can I do?

Help!!!

posted by mulkey to technology (5 comments total)

I'm assuming you're on Windows. Something like AutoHotKey is what you're looking for,
posted by chrisamiller at 10:38 AM on December 6, 2007

Is this MacOS? Linux? Windows?
posted by cmiller at 10:38 AM on December 6, 2007

autohotkey will do all the above and then some, if you dont mind a couple of days to come up to speed on it. It will be the last keyboard/mouse shortcut program you'll ever need. You can ask your questions in the autohotkey forums (they usually reply within half a day). Very easy to use, unbelievably handy, and shortcuts is only the start of what it can do for you.
posted by jak68 at 10:41 AM on December 6, 2007 [1 favorite]

Yes I'm using windows. I'll check out Autohotkey. Thanks so much!
posted by mulkey at 11:12 AM on December 6, 2007

If theres any shortcut key to the menu, you can use that plus any letters to open the menu and another letter to run the command.

For example, the command prompt doesn't seem have a proper menu, but I can copy/paste without using the mouse, which translates to

Alt+Spacebar , "E"dit, "P"aste
posted by mphuie at 3:13 PM on December 6, 2007