Re: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again

  • From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 16:02:33 -0800

Allan,

first of all, I think by now you know that your English isn't a big 
communications problem, yes? Okay!

So. Thanks for chiming in. I want you to know that of course I knew both of 
these were shortcuts, and that they targeted the executable file you 
describe using the path. That is all familiar stuff for me. And I knew 
approximately where the shortcuts were represented in my Jaws folders, but I 
didn't know their typical filenames. So that's nice to know.

But here's a question. You suggest not providing the same key assignment in 
both icon and start menu item? Well, first of all, I've usually done that 
(unnecessarily, if nothing worse) and it hasn't caused it not to work. I 
mean, I could definitely understand not putting *different* key assignments 
in the two places, because that would obviously cause a conflict. But the 
same letter for the hotkey? I don't know. It hasn't been one of my problems.

Personally, I do like to keep program icons on the Desktop because I find 
that a convenient way to launch something so that my memory isn't a 
repository of a thousand hotkey combinations. But the way I keep my Desktop 
relatively clean (there are only two rows of icons at the left side, I 
promise you) is by not allowing anything I download to be placed immediately 
on the Desktop, which is a common default for many things. Although lately I 
notice a new default in the download dialogues, something I'm so unfamiliar 
with that I can't remember the abbreviation. Oh, I know. Bib art. What's bib 
art? Drawings a little kid makes on the cloth mommy ties around its neck to 
keep the food off its chest? That's all I can think of for "bib art."

Anyway,I'm just going to start doing what Rick Justice does. Assign the 
hotkeys in the properties dialogues associated with the shortcuts on the 
Programs menu, and forget about doing it with the icons. Yes, who knows why 
there's such a redundancy. I know. Maybe if you choose during an 
installation to not allow a shortcut to be placed on the start menu, but 
allow only an icon... yes, that must be it. But still, it turns out 
strangely, if they both exist and both their properties dialogues include a 
shortcut tab. Silly design. To put it politely.

Thanks again,
Daniel
From: "Allan Wong" <allan.wkf@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again


hi Yardbird aka Daniel,
allow me to chime into this thread and share my noledge.

ok, to make thing simple, both desktop icon and start menu/programs options 
are just a shortcut file link directly to

C:\Program Files\Freedom Scientific\JAWS\8.0\jfw.exe

jfw.exe is the executable file for jaws. so when you press on either this 
shortcut files, jaws will lonch.

to be more spesific, both this desktop icon and the start menu icon are 2 
different shortcut file but link back to a same location
that is jfw.exe.

please don't asign a same keystroke to both shortcut file as you may confuse 
the windows.

just for your reference, the start menus shortcut file for jaws are found 
under the following location:
C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs\JAWS 8.0

and the shortcut file on the desktop in
C:\Documents and Settings\"user ID"\Desktop

note: the user ID is your windows log-in id.

maybe people may ask, why should have 2 different icon for the same result, 
i also don't know the answer for this but for me, i
don't like my desktop have too many icons, so i will delete off the jaws 
icon found on the desktop and just use the one in
start/programs/jaws 8.0.

hope this helps.

ps. if my english are poor and make you don't understand what i'm talking 
about, sorry about that <smile>.

Warmest Regards,
Allan Wong

From: "Yardbird" <yardbird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Chris,

Thanks to your detailed directions, I finally managed to overcome my
problem, because you were able to explain how Windows was being confounded
by too casual a method of changing hotkey assignments. there's no way I
could have thought on my own about how windows registers these assignments,
in contrast from what one might innocently imagine. How did you happen to
learn about this?

I've got my hotkeys assigned as I prefer them now, j for the current version
and k for the one preceding, in case I need to fall back on it (I'm not the
kind of user who chooses between different versions because I know that one
works  better in one context and another version in another context. I just
like to have a backup, like having a second car in case the new one has to
go to the shop for a week.

But here's something that I can't figure out intuitively, as I couldn't
understand the overall issue intuitively, either. Someone else in the course
of this thread advised me to pay attention to the properties hotkey settings
associated with the program launch control under Start/Programs, instead of
the icon properties. Or in addition to the icon properties. I can't
remember. My mind is spinning from going back and forth among all these
properties dialogues, then exiting Jaws and testing the hotkeys I've
attempted to set up, and then returning to one or another of the properties
dialogues yet again.

What's the relationship between the Start Menu/Programs-related Properties
settings and the seemingly identical dialogues you get when you look at the
icon properties? By the way, just want to mention that while the trusty old
Alt Enter may bring up properties for an icon, if you do it while focused on
the Jaws launch item on the Start Menu/Programs display, all you'll get is
the properties routines related to the Desktop and Task Bar. Just in case
that helps someone.

For instance, I discovered that after I'd deleted the previous hotkey in
both a version's Desktop icon and its Start Menu/Programs launch item, then
provided a letter to go with the default Control Alt in just the Start
menu/Programs item, then exited Jaws and pressed that key combo, it worked,
and launched the version I meant it to launch. But at this point, I hadn't
even yet opened the icon's properties and assigned the key combination
there, yet. So does one of these locations have priority, in the case of a
disagreement? Or, as in this case, is it completely redundant to assign a
hotkey to the icon once you've assigned it on the Start Menu? Or am I not
asking this in the right order? Can you explain the correlation between
icons and their Start menu counterparts in regard to hotkeys?

Thanks. Hope I haven't asked my questions too confusingly. I'm obviously a
bit addled by this point.

From: "Mullins, Chris" <Chris.Mullins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, December 06, 2007 2:01 AM
Subject: RE: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again


I have not had the problem with any automatically generated desktop
icons but then again, I'm stil on Jaws 7.1.  The desctop shortcut was
generated by the installation program, programmers can make mistakes, so
it makes sense to me, to check that the contents correspond to the
label.

I have done a bit of testing and found that if you specify a hot key
combination that is already being used, the setting is retained in the
shortcut key property but will not work, as it would seem that Windows
registers the shortcut key combination and the path to the related
executable and this is not over-written by a new shortcut definition
using the same key combination.  It would seem a hot key combination is
only released by Windows when a shortcut is either deleted altogether or
the Shortcut key property is changed to another unused key combination.

This would explain your circumstances.  Alt+Control+j was not registered
when the Jaws9 shortcut was automatically created because it was already
being used by Jaws8.  When you manually set the shortcut property of
Jaws8 to Alt+Control+k, this did not register either because it was
already being used by Jaws7.

To fix your situation you must first set the shortcut property of Jaws7
to something not currently being used.  The shortcut key property of
Jaws8 is set to alt+control+k but this will still not work because it
has not yet been registered.  If you open up the Shortcut tab for Jaws8,
tab down to OK and press enter, it still will not register because no
details have changed on the screen, so the registration process is not
triggered.  You have to change the shortcut key property to something
else unused, OK it, then go back in and set it to alt+control+k, OK it
again and it will now register.  To fix Jaws9, repeat what you did for
Jaws8 but using alt+control+j.


Cheers
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Yardbird
Sent: 06 December 2007 00:13
To: jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again

Chris,

I understand what you mean, and I know where to look for what you're
talking about. But tell me, why would an icon recently and automatically
created when I installed Jaws 9 have anything in its target field other
than the path to the executable for launching that version, which I'd
just installed and which had created that icon? How could that kind of
problem happen? I will look, but it doesn't seem likely. Have you ever
discovered that your automatically-created program icons pointed to the
wrong program? If so, I'd be interested to hear how it happened and
which icons had turned out to be messed up like this. thanks very
much.----- Original Message ----- 

There are other things I could say to express why this sounds unlikely
to me, but that question ought to be a start.
From: "Mullins, Chris" <Chris.Mullins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <jfw@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, December 05, 2007 12:27 AM
Subject: RE: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again


When you have gone into the Shortcut dialog, have you checked what the
Target file edit box is referencing?  Changing the label of the icon is
not sufficient, the Icon might be labelled Jaws9 but if the file name in
the target edit box is in the Jaws8 folder you will load Jaws8.
Likewise, with an icon labelled Jaws8 pointing at the Jaws7 executable.
All a shortcut does is to simulate typing the contents of the Target
edit box into the Run dialog and pressing enter.


Cheers
Chris
-----Original Message-----
From: jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:jfw-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Yardbird
Sent: 05 December 2007 06:37
To: JFW List
Subject: The old Jaws hotkey issue, again

the topic of how to successfully set a hotkey for launching Jaws has
come up repeatedly over the past year, as Versions 8, and now 9, seem to
be troublesome for a lot of users in this respect. Well, I was doing
okay with version 8 for a while after finally getting a hotkey
assignment to stick (I forget how, exactly), but now I've installed
Version 9 and it's even stranger than before.

First of all, let me make it clear that I basically know how to do this.
At least I know how to do it for any other application that's
represented by an icon on my desktop. Select the icon, press the context
menu key (right side of spacebar, to left of Control key) and choose
properties. Tab, and you're in the edit field for establishing a hotkey.
You don't even have to bother pressing control and alt, because that's
the standard combination and Jaws will insert that for you. All you have
to do is press the letter key you'd like to use.

Then you hear Jaws read the edit box, and it'll say something like
Control Alt J. Which is what you wanted. You tab down to OK, press
Enter, and there you go.

Well, since Jaws 8, everyone's had to do all sorts of acrobatics to use
this feature. Advice floats around like urban myths. Use this letter but
not that letter. It's okay to tab away from the field, but don't tab
back to it or what you entered will disappear. Or don't tab at all, just
press Enter. If you tab further into the dialogue, it will delete your
entry. And so forth.

Now, none of that ought to be necessary, of course, and it didn't used
to be. Until Jaws 8. But whatever.

Now it's really interesting. I actually managed to set Control Insert J
for my new Jaws 9, and changed my hotkey for Jaws 8 to Control Alt K,
just in case I need to use it.

And both settings stayed set, which I thought was a good sign. But now,
if I exit Jaws 9 to see if restarting it will stop a bad behavior (don't
ask) and then press Control Alt J, what comes up but, yep, Jaws 8. I
went to the Desktop and rechecked. yes, everything is still set just as
I set it. But it's working the wrong way.

Ah, here's a thought, just for the heck of it. Let me exit Jaws 9, then
hotkey Control Alt key and see if it actually *also* brings up Jaws 8
or, maybe, launches Jaws 9, so that it's all backward. Hang on..
Nope. Control Alt K brings up Jaws 7, which is what it used to do before
I changed everything around. And if I go into the properties for the
Jaws 7 icon, it says it has no hot key, just as I'd think it would.
Nonetheless, it's as if Jaws 7 is still K, Jaws 8 is still J, and Jaws 9
has no hotkey.
none of which is what properties say.

Has anyone been through this, or anything like it? I've tried this
repeatedly but can't get these hotkeys to behave correctly. Out of
ideas.

thanks.

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