Datasheet

KeyBoard shortCuts
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From the Product Area dropdown menu select Edit Menu, which lets you view and
customize commands on the application’s Edit menu. Click Cut in the Commands list. Its
shortcut—Cmd+X/Ctrl+X—will appear in the Current Shortcuts field beneath the list. Don’t
like that shortcut? Click Default: Cmd+X or Default: Ctrl+X to highlight it, and then click the
Remove button. InDesign will promptly notify you that you cannot modify the Default set of
keyboard shortcuts and ask whether to create a new set for your customizations. InDesign can
contain multiple keyboard shortcut sets. In fact, if you look toward the very top of the dialog
box, you’ll see that it already had three—Default, Shortcuts for PageMaker 7.0, and Shortcuts
for QuarkXPress 4.0. If you’re migrating to InDesign from PageMaker or QuarkXPress, using
one of those sets can ease your transition. In the QuarkXPress set, for instance, object-arrange
commands such as Bring Forward, Bring to Front, Send Backward, and Send to Back use
XPress’s familiar F5 shortcuts instead of InDesign’s shortcuts, which use the left and right
brackets ([ ]). Of course, InDesign isn’t PageMaker or QuarkXPress, so not every command or
keyboard shortcut from one has a place in the other; the shortcut sets are not total conversions
but helping hands.
To create your own set, click the New Set button and name the set, or begin a change and
answer Yes when prompted. Go ahead and create a new set now, just to practice while you go
through the rest of this section. While working in your set, remember to save it from time to
time with the button at the top. If, after working through this chapter, you elect to eject the
shortcut set, simply choose it in the Set drop-down list and click the Delete Set button.
Returning to modifying the Edit  Cut command, let’s say that, instead of removing the
default shortcut, you’d like to add a second shortcut. You’d like both Cmd+X/Ctrl+X and
Cmd+Shift+X/Ctrl+ Shift+X to effect a cut. In that case, to add a shortcut, position your cur-
sor within the New Shortcut field at the bottom of the dialog box and press the new shortcut.
(Note to Windows users: You cannot use the Windows key as a modifier within the applica-
tion.) Beneath the field you should see a warning that Cmd+Shift+X/Ctrl+ Shift+X is already
assigned to the Normal Horizontal Text Scale command. If you click the Assign button, you’ll
strip Normal Horizontal Text Scale from the shortcut and assign it to Cut.
To the right of the New Shortcut field is Context. Every keyboard shortcut can be targeted
to certain types of tasks. You could, for example, bind Cmd+Shift+X/Ctrl+Shift+X to Edit 
Cut only when working with tables. While working with text, with XML selections, within
alert and dialog boxes, in the new Presentation mode, and in all other circumstances, it will
not invoke the Cut command. In fact, if you set the Context field to Table now, you’ll see
that the Currently Assigned To notice no longer says Normal Horizontal Text Scale. That’s
because the shortcut is bound to that command only in the context of working with text. The
horizontal scale of text is irrelevant to XML code, dialog boxes, and the structure of tables,
and that command and shortcut combination has been assigned to function only where it
is relevant—when working directly with text. If you left Context set to Table and assigned
Cmd+Shift+X/Ctrl+Shift+X to the Cut command, that would apply only when working with
tables. The same shortcut would still invoke Normal Horizontal Text Scale when working
with text. In other words, the same keyboard shortcut can be used six times over for different
commands in different contexts.
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