Mac OS X Porting - Keyboard Shortcuts

Contributors

• Ismael Merzaq: Ismael
• Mox Soini: Mox

Introduction

For most of the keyboard shortcuts in OpenOffice.org, the Mac OS X port will follow the other OpenOffice.org platforts, to maintain consistency and allow people to use several platforms without much re-learning.

However, there are some special cases that require Mac OS X port to make exceptions in shortcuts, compared to the other platforms:

• Mac OS X System has global keyboard shortcuts that override existing OpenOffice.org shortcuts
• Apple Human Interface Guidelines (AHIG) requires that all Mac OS X applications define certain common set of shortcuts. That common set might cause a change for shortcut to have different functionality.

  Example:
  Some key accelerators are already used by Mac OS X, and so Mac OS X catches them and does the associated action,
  causing OpenOffice.org to not see them. 
  
  For example, when we press F9 in openoffice (native version or X11 version), the fields aren't refreshed, 
  because the Mac OS X function Exposé is launched and catches the key accelerator (to refresh the fields, go to
  tools>refresh>fields in the menu.
  
  What we have to do is to change the conflicting key accelerators for OpenOffice.org.

Mac OS X Shortcuts

The following table describes the differences in keyboard shortcuts and the reasons for the changes. For detailed information, see: Apple Human Interface Guidelines, AHIG for key accelerators and menus and for menu examples

OpenOffice.org Mac OS X shortcuts

Functionality	OpenOffice.org Mac OS X	OpenOffice.org	reason
OpenOffice.org platform
Main command key	Command (CMD) the "Apple" key)	Control (CTRL)	In Mac OS X, the Command -modifier is the logical equivalent of Control modifier in Windows and Linux
Function keys	F1 - F12	-	Function keys in Mac OS X have system-wide functionality (like F9 for Exposé)
Spotlight search	CMD-Space	-	This shortcut is used system-wide in Mac OS X
Apple reserved	CMD-Shift-Space	-	This shortcut is used system-wide in Mac OS X (see Apple shortcut documentation)
Preferences access to settings	CMD-, Preferences... in (System-wide) Application menu, i.e. the "Apple-menu"	??? Options in Tools -menu	AHIG, system-wide standard
Help	CMD-?	F1	AHIG, system-wide standard
Redo	CMD-SHIFT-Z	CTRL-Y	AHIG, system-wide standard
Spellcheck	CMD-; in Edit -menu	F7	AHIG, system-wide standard
Non-breaking space	Option-Space	CTRL-Space	conflicts with AHIG. See also Wikipedia:Non-breaking space
Close Window	CMD-W Close in File -menu	CTRL-F4	AHIG, system-wide standard. Win/Linux OpenOffice.org has "close the window" in window menu with the key accelerator and "close" in the file menu without key accelerator.
Save As	CMD-SHIFT-S	-	AHIG, system-wide standard, no shortcut in OpenOffice.org
Left-align	CMD-{ i.e. left bracket	??	AHIG, system-wide standard
Right-align	CMD-} i.e. right bracket	??	AHIG, system-wide standard
align to center	i.e. pipe	??	AHIG, system-wide standard
Decrease size of the selected item	CMD--	??	AHIG, system-wide standard. Equivalent of the Smaller command in OpenOffice.org
Increase size of the selected item	CMD-+	??	AHIG, system-wide standard. Equivalent of the ?? command in OpenOffice.org
conditional hyphen	??	CTRL--	conflicts with AHIG
Function keys Getting and showing the list of available fonts to user	ATS	NSFontManager The only way to get identical font (family) listing as in Mac OS X native applications and in Font Book	not yet implemented?

• OOWriter:
  • cmd+space ==> shows spotlight instead of adding a non breaking space
  • F11 ==> shows the desktop instead of showing the style dialog
  • F9 ==> shows exposé instead of refreshing fields
  • shift+cmd+space ==> is Apple reserved, in OOo is used for default format in format menu (see Apple shortcut documentation)

• OOCalc:
  • F9 ==> shows exposé instead of recalculing the cell content (tools>cell content>recalc)
  • F12 ==> shows dashboard instead of doing Data>Plan>Group