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If checkboxes are not possible, a hot key for "strikethrough?"

2013-12-17
2014-09-08
  • pekingduckman

    pekingduckman - 2013-12-17

    Thank you again for creating the best post-it notes program I've come across (and I've been using these programs for almost 10 years now!).

    I use PNotes for my to-do lists, as I'm sure many other users do as well. I would love integrated check boxes, but I saw from a search that this functionality is not possible (https://sourceforge.net/p/pnotes/discussion/762672/thread/1adee22c/).

    Given that fact, I would like to suggest adding a keyboard shortcut for strikethrough, so that users can more easily and quickly manage to-do lists.

    I know you receive a lot of features requests, but I think this would be a particularly high yield function because 1) so many people use post-its for to-do's and 2) for those people, it could save a LOT of time.

    Each time I finish a to-do, I Alt-Tab back to my PNotes "to do" note, I use keyboard shortcuts to highlight that particular task--but then I have to manually use the mouse to navigate over to the "strikethrough" icon, and I'm further slowed down because I have to be precise about the navigation since the icon is quite small.

    This last step would be an ideal action to automate with a keyboard shortcut, since I do it so frequently every day (and if I don't...shame on me for being lazy =)). It ends up being one the actions I perform most frequently in PNotes, doing it dozens of times a day. So having a keyboard shortcut would be massively helpful.

    (As a concrete example, in OneNote, keyboard shortcuts make creating and using to-do lists extremely easy and fast: I add a checkbox with "Ctrl+1," check the box with "Ctrl+1," and, if necessary, can also uncheck the box with "Ctrl+1." But I like PNotes better, and would prefer to use PNotes for my to-do lists, provided I were able to manage them more quickly).

    If you think my suggestion has merit, please consider "Ctrl+-" as a candidate for the hot key. That's the hot key used in OneNote for strikethrough, and I'm found it works exceedingly well. It's very easy to adopt because it's very intuitive, since the "minus" sign looks like "strikethrough." Of all the hot keys I've learned, it was one of the quickest to adopt and I use it all the time.

    One additional hot key would really make managing to-do lists in PNotes a joy: a hot key to toggle (simple) bullet points on and off. That way you could quickly make bulleted lists, and just as quickly check off items via "strikethrough."

    I've also found the OneNote hot key for bullets to be EXTREMELY easy to learn and helpful: it is "Ctrl+PERIOD". Again, very intuitive, I learned the hot key very quickly and use it constantly. (They also have an excellent hot key to toggle on/off numbered lists that I use all the time as well: "Ctrl+/").

    If you do not like my suggestion, would you be able to point me in a direction on how I might be able to implement this myself? I've set up a number of hot keys using PNote's built-in "Hot Keys Management" dialog, but it doesn't seem like I can create hot keys for text formatting there. Is there another way to do this? For instance, would I be able to implement this myself if I learned how to use the program, AutoHotKey? Unfortunately, I don't know how to program, so any feasible solution for me could not be very technical =(.

    Apologies for the lengthy post. Thank you very much for your time!

     
  • oldlamer

    oldlamer - 2013-12-18

    If you are using the latest version - 1.4 - the built-in shortcuts for formatting options are there, Ctrl+K for strikethrough, fore example. (they are unchangeable, because these are "native" shortcuts of rich edit control). In next version I will allow to add hot keys for bullets menu.
    menu

     
  • pekingduckman

    pekingduckman - 2013-12-19

    Agh! I responded to this yesterday, but it looks like after I hit "Preview," I forgot to "Post." Let me re-write my post:


    I'm embarrassed that I missed that =P. Thank you so much for pointing it out! That's going to save me SO MUCH time.

    The surprising thing is, despite using PNotes for several years now, this is the first time I've seen that menu! I think that's because the footer section is so convenient, and does such a good job of letting me easily access all the commonly-used text formatting commands. So, I've never even thought to right-click the text or had to go through the trouble of navigating that menu.

    When I wanted to see if there was a keyboard shortcut for "strikethrough," the way I checked was to hover my mouse over the "strikethrough" icon in the footer. I think the reason I expected that action would reveal the keyboard shortcut is because in a lot of programs that I commonly use, like the Microsoft Office Suite, when you hover over the icon, it will display both the description and shortcut. For example if you hover over the "Bold" icon, it will display, "Bold (Ctrl+B)".

    I think a lot of users might make the same mistake as me, since a lot of users probably primarily use the footer section for text formatting, and have been similarly trained by Microsoft Office and other common programs to look for shortcuts by hovering the mouse. Perhaps in the next version, you might consider adding the shortcut next to the description upon hover? I know you said these are "native" shortcuts for rich edit control, so maybe a lot of users already know them. But at least for non-technical users like me, Ctrl+K for "strikethrough" was a surprise--in Microsoft Office, Ctrl+K is the shortcut to insert a link.

    Thank you so much for adding a shortcut for bullet points in the next version! This is already the best Post-Its program, and I love that you continue to make it better and better. I really appreciate you making this available to all of us. This sounds nerdy, but I can't wait to be able to quickly create and check off lists in PNotes =).

     
  • oldlamer

    oldlamer - 2013-12-20

    Thank you for good words, I blush with your praise :)
    Displaying hot keys in tooltip text is a good idea and I will add it to next version - as soon as will collect enough suggestions or bug reports for something that could be called "version" :) As yet there are two your suggestions only (bullets and tooltips) in the "cart".

     
  • pekingduckman

    pekingduckman - 2013-12-21

    That would be perfect, thanks so much!

    By the way, do you know if there's a way to subscribe to threads on this forum without using RSS? I'd like to get email notifications when there's a response. When I clicked on "Follow" at the top of the page, Chrome kept directing me to an error page, so at first I thought the button was broken.

    But I see now that that's just because Chrome doesn't have built-in RSS capabilities? I've never used RSS before, and would rather just subscribe to the thread in the traditional way if that is an option, since I don't see myself using RSS for anything except for this forum.

    Thanks again!

     

    Last edit: pekingduckman 2013-12-21
  • oldlamer

    oldlamer - 2013-12-22

    I get email notifications without RSS. And I've never done something for this - may be because I'm the project admin?

     
  • bandaangosta

    bandaangosta - 2014-09-08

    Hi, great app!
    I also came to this app looking for a tool for my to-do list. I would really enjoy having checkboxes, although bullets and strikethroughs will do the trick for now. Please consider adding checkboxes in a later version.

    About the shortcut for bullets, I don't know if it's a recent feature or if it was always there, but I just tried Ctrl + Shift + L (the way it's done in Windows 7 Sticky Notes) and it works!

     

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