[Nigelw]

I use the "spread evenly" buttons in the "Alignment" palette all the time to evenly space out shapes. I was wondering if anyone has found a way to attach a keyboard shortcut to these buttons? They don't appear as menu commands anywhere, and I can't find a reference to them in OmniGraffle's AppleScript dictionary.

Any tips would be hugely appreciated. Thanks!

[RobTrew]

The latest update of Keyboard Maestro allows you to make a tiny screendump of an icon, check whether that icon is on the screen, click it if it's there, and branch off to choose a menu item and so on if it isn't.

(You would also need a snippet of Applescript, to be run by Keyboard Maestro, to check whether any shapes were selected before proceeding).

[RobTrew]

A quick test shows that it works reasonably fast if you strip it down to something which only works if the Alignment inspector is already open.



(The pair of illustrative macros attached below aim to be more ambitious and test if the inspector is ready, and summon it if not, but they end up searching for the image 3 times, and I find them noticeably slow ... Over-engineered, in short. Sometimes keeping it simple really does work better :-)

[RobTrew]

The quickest of all, if you are prepared to keep the inspector positioned at the top left of the screen, while you do your graphic editing,



is a macro which simply clicks a fixed position on the screen:

[simonpssetterstrom]

System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts

Just make sure you have the exact case of the menu item you want a shortcut for. When you have set it, it will display in the menu so you can confirm it.

[whpalmer4]

Simon, the items in question appear in no menu and thus the Application Shortcuts tab is of no help here. Keyboard Maestro looks intriguingly complex, however :-)

[Nigelw]

@RobTrew thanks for the tip on Keyboard Maestro. I had no idea it could automate based on such complex criteria. Definitely good to know.

For now I don't think it's worth it to me to buy & run it simply for this one shortcut. However, now I know some of what it's capable of I may find enough other uses to justify it.

[RobTrew]

Originally Posted by whpalmer4

Keyboard Maestro looks intriguingly complex, however :-)

One of the larger Swiss Army knives :-)

It seems a reasonably basic design goal to make all functions accessible to the keyboard.

Software that is subject to the cross-platform discipline tends to do better on this (all palette buttons in Adobe Illustrator, for example, have a matching single-letter code, sometimes shifted).

(The difference is that the Adobe packages have to survive in the MS Windows culture, which for all its ugliness and other failings, is much stronger and more consistent on keyboard accessibility. Menu items generally have predictable (or at least mnemonic) keyboard assignments, and blind patches are rather rare .... )

A goal for OG 6 ?

Mice have their place, but hunting and pecking is not what they are good for – it adds pointless friction to the flow of work to have to use them for functions like this.

[Nigelw]

Emailed support to request the addition of a menu item so that a keyboard shortcut can be assigned to this function. Here's to hoping they decide this is worthwhile in a future release.