Switching windows on MacOS X and Eagle 5.7

Greetings Jason,

I will look into this for you.

On the Windows platform, hitting Alt+W still brings me to the "Windows" tool bar, from there I can still hit  "1" or "2" or "3" etc. and select a window

This is one more keystroke but it does get me to other windows with my left hand.

Will this approach work in MacOS X?

Hello Jacob,

Many thanks for those that replied overnight (well, it was overnight for me!)

I think that Richard's answer is the correct one - I'll try the edit .brd and edit .sch tonight. Unfortunately, it doesn't give me an option to go to back to the Control Panel, which I occasionally need to do because I always trim my libraries down to a minimum, and only add them back in when I discover I need an object in a library that I didn't enable. Luckily the "occasionally" aspect of this means its probably okay (for the time being). And I don't do component editing that often.

I am a Windows and MacOS Developer, so I'm familiar with the decisions as to why it was done that way - it just would've been nice to have an eaglerc option to revert it! I use a custom keymap which is identical to the Windows one, so I don't have that problem.

Alt-W followed by number isn't a nomenclature that MacOS X uses (although there may be another way to do it; never really thought about it) - and Alt-Tab, while there is a MacOS X equivalent, it only switches between programs, and not windows within a program. I know that both will work on Windows.

I also know that MacOS X Eagle users are almost certainly in a minority

It's a little more subtle than that:

When you use a PC with a French keyboard, there are two Alt keys - the left one is Alt, the right is Alt-Gr.

To enter characters like "{" and "[", you use Alt-Gr with the relevant number key, whereas Alt with the number doesn't really do anything unless the application itself understands those key presses.

On MacOS, both keys act like Alt-Gr, so pressing either Alt key you're meant to get "{" and "[".

The problem is that CadSoft had a rather handy way of switching between windows with the Alt keys - which works fine on a PC due the distinction between the two Alt keys. However, on MacOS, this doesn't work terribly well if you need to create ULPs, since you'd find yourself switching between windows unexpectedly.

The possible solutions I can come up with are:

- Work out which of the Alt keys are being pressed, so it acts like the PC.

Unfortunately, this isn't really a good solution since users may be used to pressing the left Alt key instead of the right Alt key to get their characters.

- Disable window switching when in a text editor window

This will work, but it is a bit ... clunky.

- Make it a configurable option

Again, this will work, but means there isn't an option for some keyboard types to switch windows.

- Make the key combinations themselves configurable

This would be the best solution (IMHO), but is a lot more development work.

Note that the Fn key itself has no relevance on this at all; that mainly controls the operation of the function keys, and not the number keys (I've set mine up so the Exposé et. al. keys need Fn pressed). To the best of my knowledge, no amount of changes to the system configuration would actually allow the left Alt to be different to the right Alt, and the "{", "[" characters aren't system functions.

Hi Richard,

Thats good to know.

I really like Eagle, sorry if my post sounded a bit pompous!

-Kenny

 

I really think that CadSoft should have left this feature enabled and given the users advice on how to use the system preferences to get what they need. Now the needs of the few are outnumbering the needs of the many. Cadsoft should have empowered the user, rather than cripple the software.

I will forward this subject to our development people again. Maybe we can find a good solution for the future.

-Richard

I am a Windows and MacOS Developer, so I'm familiar with the decisions as to why it was done that way

You know, Apple know about these things, thats why in system preferences on Mac OS X you have to choice to use either the system functions for the keys or the applications function. (Then you can access the 'system' functions by using the FN button).

Mac OS X also allows the user to re-assign system keys which clash with application shortcuts.

I really think that CadSoft should have left this feature enabled and given the users advice on how to use the system preferences to get what they need. Now the needs of the few are outnumbering the needs of the many. Cadsoft should have empowered the user, rather than cripple the software.

Yup - I've read that, but sometimes you become a bit blind and miss something

Nothing else has leapt out at me as being a change in the way I work (the migration of the "As PDF" button to a drop-down had me worried that the PDF generation had been altered, and my PDF reader [which I use to group up several PCBs, annotate and then print for photo etching] wouldn't be able to cope with it, but it's as happy as it was beforehand).

Hi again,

all the differences between EAGLE versions are documented in the file UPDATE in eagle's doc folder.

Have fun!

Richard

Okay: edit .brd and edit .sch seem to work fine (minor problem with scrollwheel, as I mentioned above, still occurs - although keyboard focus does switch*), so many thanks for that!

One advantage it does have is that I can use the same key to switch to the other window.

I had a quick look to see if the Alt-W method of activating menus was available, but I've not found it. There is a way to assign keyboard shortcuts to application menus - but you need to put the exact string for the menu in. Since the Eagle Window menu entries are dependant on the current project name, that makes it a bit impractical.

There does appear to be a way to cycle through windows on applications, but it appears as though the application itself needs to handle them (Command-`). It certainly seems as though Eagle doesn't support this (my default keymap doesn't have this key, but re-enabling the normal one for the keyboard and trying it also didn't do anything). (This is on http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343)

* It's quite amusing (in some way) - you switch window, use the scroll wheel, find the other window zooms in and out, and you press Ctrl-F2 to get back, only to find nothing really happens because the window you switched to is already at the full zoom

Anyway, now to find if there have been other changes which result in my workflow being modified (the only one I can see is that the PDF export is now done differently - I just need to check that the PDF export produces similar output to 5.6).

Once again, many thanks.

Hi Jason,

I will keep this subject in mind. Maybe we can find another solution for switching between EAGLE windows for the future.

You wrote:

I also know that MacOS X Eagle users are almost certainly in a minority

So let's do the best and let it grow... ;-)

Richard

Hi Jason,

I will keep this subject in mind. Maybe we can find another solution for switching between EAGLE windows for the future.

You wrote:

I also know that MacOS X Eagle users are almost certainly in a minority

So let's do the best and let it grow... ;-)

Richard