Is there a hotkey to exit from RM8’s Edit Person screen? I can’t find one.
My muscle memory from RM7 is that Alt-O frequently does a Close of some kind. When my muscle memory tries to exit out of RM8’s Edit Person screen, obviously nothing happens. I’m willing to retrain my muscle memory, but I would need something to retrain it to. Hopefully, it would be something simple like Alt-O, not something similar to playing the piano with some sort of Ctrl + Shirt + Alt combination.
This may seem like a trivial issue, but it really isn’t trivial when I’m doing a lot of heavy data entry. It’s very disruptive to heavy data entry to constantly have to shift back and forth between the keyboard and the mouse.
I guess I was expecting to find the information Alt-F4 and Escape as a way to close the RM8 Edit Person window in the RM8 documentation.
Alt-F4 and Escape do both work on RM8 to close the Edit Person window. Curiously, they both do a Save on the way out even though I think of both Alt-F4 and Escape in Windows as being a Cancel function. Alt-F4 and Escape also both work on RM7 to close the Edit Person window and they work on RM7 without doing a Save on the way out, consistent with the notion that Alt-F4 and Escape are both Cancel.
The Close button on RM7 has the “o” underscored. I’m pretty sure the underscore is a Windows standard that alerts the user that the underscored letter will work with the Alt key to perform the function of the button. The underscore convention provides an excellent way to provide help information without needing to look it up anywhere. That’s how I came to use Alt-O for Close on RM7 in the first place and that’s how I have learned nearly all the Windows hotkeys through the years. The Close button in RM8 doesn’t have the “o” underscored. And of course, most RM8 functions use an icon rather than a button with words so there is no opportunity to underscore the letter that might work for the Alt hotkey combination.
I’m aware that there is a desire to have RM8 work the same on both Windows and Mac, whatever “the same” means. And I don’t know if Mac has the same underscore convention as Windows. I guess I’ll have to learn to use either Alt-F4 or Escape as a keyboard way to close the Edit Person window in RM8. But neither one of them feels very comfortable or natural.
Macs do not use an underscore to indicate command shortcuts. Every menu shows the keystrokes to use for each item that has a shortcut. ESC should work and perhaps Command W (as in browser). However RM8 is so non mac standard in behaviour it is only a guess. Google should provide a list of common Windows shortcuts to try.
This is simply one of DOZENS of things that we learned using RM7 (and every version prior to that back into Family Origins) - and things that are COMMON and CONVENTIONAL Windows user interface standards - which RM8 has blissfully thrown away.
The Alt-O that you speak of worked because the OK button or the Close button had a line under the “o” which is how Windows identifies such keyboard accelerators. I used them extensively and RM8 has driven me back to the mouse to do such things and as a result I am MUCH slower.
I have made multiple attempts to explain the Windows standards, and the value of them, and it appears to have fallen on deaf ears. Please feel free to add to the chorus …
I don’ think this is the case. The issue seems to have been that they had to roll their own bits and bobs in the UI and this hasn’t been conducive restoring key board shortcuts. One of the RM8 videos has a bit from Bruce about all the things that they couldn’t do and how they had to roll their own. It is just another in a long list of bad decisions that I think Bruce and Company has made.
FYI @thejerrybryan Mac is even shorter on keyboard shortcuts than Windows, and thus a right pain for heavy data entry use.
Totally agree it’s a pain switching from keyboard to mouse.
And yes, I too will have to retrain from ESC not being cancel but save - which is all very well for the EDIT screens, but does not work for the first input screen, where ESC is indeed CANCEL.
Even if we could TAB to the OK/Close buttton on initial input I’d be happier.
Usually the arrow / mouse is way up the top of the screen when I’ve switched to keyboard to input, and switching back from keyboard entry just to OK/Close the input screen down the bottom of the input form is a right pain.
Mac is great on data entry. The OS has lots of keyboard shortcuts plus very useful trackpad gestures. Unlike windows pcs the touchpad works very well and many actions are just a twitch away. An edit person window can be closed via the red gumdrop, escape or Command W instead of Bruce’s back arrow. RM8 does not use the mac back and forward shortcuts unfortunately.
What trackpad? What touchpad? They may be useful replacements for a mouse, I don’t know. What we’re talking about is being able to do the whole job, the WHOLE job without your fingers ever leaving the keyboard. THAT is data entry.
Subject is effective data entry and manover. Esc or command w closes edit window. Trackpad…gestures beat a mouse all hollow and are part of the keyboard.