What mac os?

[CaptainQuark]

CaptainQuark... open System Preferences, click "Keyboard and Mouse", then click the "Keyboard shortcuts" tab... change the shortcut for Spotlight to something that doesn't conflict... this might also be the solution to your XPress problem, since it's also keyboard related, but I don't know what in XPress would be conflicting...

Thanks for that, adambyte.

As I mentioned, I've just installed Tiger today and then had to get straight back into producing yet another book, so I've not had time to tinker and find out how everything works.

I've tried what you suggested and it has helped with Spotlight getting in the way of zooming in Freehand, but the problem with QuarkXPress cannot, it appears be solved. This is a known problem that is much discussed on the Quark forum, which has many suggestions for working around this bug.

 

[CaptainQuark]

Why not switch to Adobe InDesign (he says half jokingly and half seriously)?

You might just as well suggest that I stop breathing!

 

[fryke]

It's the little things. I'd maybe prefer 10.3.x to Tiger, if only I could select 2 items in the Finder, hit copy and paste the files into a Mail.app message window. I can do that in 10.4.x, but in Panther, it works only for _one_ file at a time, which is utterly stupid. Apple, I think, has done _many_ such stupid little things in OS X since the Public Beta, and I hate them for it almost as much as I love them for everything else. If I could live entirely off of writing short stories, I'd probably use an older white iBook with Mac OS 9.2.2. I mean: What more does a writer need than TextEdit and Mail.app. Oh, you mean those _weren't_ in classic Mac OS?

 

[bbloke]

I'm using 10.4 and think that is my preferred OS. I've used Macs since the original 128 K Mac, and I quite liked the feel "classic" OS, from the original System through to OS 8.6, but not having played much with OS 9. The classic OS felt a little quicker (I know there is an obvious reason for this) and somehow a little more friendly. On the other hand, OS X feels more heavyweight, more like a "serious" operating system and is more flexible. Overall, I prefer what OS X enables the user to do and feel it is still friendly enough.

I've tended to prefer each update to OS X over the previous one. The jump from 10.1 from 10.2 felt like the most significant to me, perhaps because 10.2 started to feel like OS X was maturing. 10.3 added some nice features, but I found I never used Exposé, as I couldn't be bothered to reach for the function keys. With 10.4, I thought that the additional features were a bit gimmicky and rather thin on the ground... but then I programmed my mouse buttons for Exposé and Dashboard, and started to use these features (OK, I could have set my mouse buttons for Exposé under 10.3 too, but hey...). I must be one of the few who really likes Dashboard and downloads new Widgets!

I never thought I'd use Spotlight, but have been proven wrong. There seem to be differences between using Command-F and the Spotlight icon in the top right of the screen, but I've come to find it handy in some circumstances.

First impressions? Not bad, not bad, but a couple of things annoy me greatly:

1. Can't hide QuarkXPress using [Cmd]+[H]

Mmm, I find the same with some Adobe apps too, or at least ones that are not the very latest version.

2. When trying to zoom in Macromedia Freehand using [Cmd]+[Alt]+[Spacebar], Spotlight gets in the way!

I found that too with some Adobe apps. I discovered that the order of the key combination can be important. [Command]-[Spacebar] would bring up Spotlight, while [Spacebar]-[Command] would bring up a magnifying glass in Illustrator etc.

 

[fryke]

About the Cmd-Spacebar thing... I've reported on this a couple of times. It seems Apple just doesn't want to "give" Adobe et al. this command. First they've tried to cover it with some keyboard-menu thingie in 10.2 and now they've occupied it with Spotlight, as if they don't know that graphics designers all over the world have been using Cmd-Space for the zoom feature for more than a decade... :/ (I _know_ there are ways around using Cmd-Space in Adobe and other applications, but if you want to suggest that, you haven't tried to get what I'm saying... I'm writing this because everytime I bring that up, someone seems to want to tell me to use something else...)

 

[CaptainQuark]

…but we Mac users are usually a fairly flexible bunch, so I'm being flexible and have solved the problem thus:

It's not as if I have been using Tiger for ages and have got used to [Cmd]+[Space] to access Spotlight, so rather than having to 're-learn' my old ways of using things, I have simply disabled the keyboard shortcut for Spotlight. I can't miss a feature that I'm not used to, can I? The icon is still there in the top right-hand corner of the menu bar, so I can click on it if I really need it. If I find that it is a worthwhile feature that fits in well with the way I work, I'll assign another keyboard shortcut to it. The most important thing for me at the moment is to be able to continue churning out the work in the way that I am used to.

 

[Lt Major Burns]

cmd-space still works as zoom. if you hold space bar like normal (instead of a tap for spotlight), the spotlight window pops up, but the cursor also changes to the magnifying glass, so carry on zooming (and the spotlight bar dissappears after you click).

it's still works.