Re: Belated look at the OSXhints April Fool's front page

Chris Ridd <chrisridd@xxxxxxx> wrote:

(Rowland McDonnell) said:

Chris Ridd <chrisridd@xxxxxxx> wrote:

(Rowland McDonnell) said:

`Look up in Dictionary', for example, does nothing when I press it
(cmd-ctrl-D). No idea what it's on about, mind. What `Dictionary'?
<shrug>

Whatever Dictionary.app is using. This is a neat but somewhat hidden
feature - select a word in a Cocoa app, and hit Cmd-Ctrl-D. A
dictionary definition for the selected word will appear.

See why documentation is needed?

It is a shame this feature is hidden. Perhaps that's done so that you
get a nice warm glow when you discover some neat little feature?

Fails horribly in my case. I get a screaming fit of frustration when I
discover some neat little feature because it should have been
documented, and unless I write my own damned manual I'll forget it.
That sort of experience - coming across `neat little features' - is the
sort of thing that'll put me off using particular software. Yes, really
- I want a manual that explain things properly. If the software is
written more as an entertaining puzzle to be solved, I'm not interested.

Do you honestly mean to say you didn't try clicking the "+" button?

Do you honestly mean to say that you automatically play around with
controls on fragile, expensive equipment which you do not understand?

With software? Of course. I trust there will be a Cancel button at some point.

I trust that the author's screwed up, failed to explain what the
software does, and has written it to do things that I really *NEVER*
want done, has written it to do things that are actively harmful to my
purposes, and has provided a UI that doesn't help at all. I have that
trust because it's what I've experienced.

My personal experience proves conclusively that fiddling with software
often results in very nasty problems if you don't understand what's
going on.

I've been bitten very very badly by playing around with software in the
past.

My experience teaches me that your blandly reassuring `oh, there'll be a
cancel button somewhere' is no guarantee of safety.

Okay, if I had a proper daily backup schedule, I'd not be so worried.
But since I don't keep a proper daily backup, I'm not really in a
position to try to learn to use most modern software.

I need documentation to figure this sort of thing out.

OK, there are only three controls to play with

And no way of telling what they do or how they interact, and so no way
of learning anything from playing with them.

but here's how it seems
to work out:

You need to know the *exact* text from the menu item you want to
change. So "New Finder Window" or "New Folder" in Adrian's case. Then
you change the shortcut by clicking in the Keyboard Shortcut field and
literally pressing the required shortcut.

Umm. But what gets changed, where? And what is the significance of the
pop-up menu displaying `All applications'?

The final wrinkle is that you can choose if this shortcut just applies
to one app (in this case, Finder) or whether it is shared across all
apps (like Hide Windows). Choose from the popup menu.

Ah - I think that might be answering my question above.

Click Add. The new shortcut appears at the bottom of the big list. If
you switch back to the Finder in Leopard, the shortcut appears in the
menu immediately. I've a feeling in Tiger you had to restart the Finder.

In my case, I'm going to change nothing at all. I've played around with
stuff like this in the past. You know what the big problem is? It
never bloody works right, and you have to re-build things manually if
anything goes wrong because you can't just throw a text config file at a
GUI to set it up.

A right pain in the arse, dealing with that sort of thing. Best left
alone, especially since I've still not got any idea what gets changed
where by what.

Rowland.

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