Switching between Quick Search and automatic call of the CL!

[pdavit]

Dear friends,

I’m having this logical problem (or should I say practical!): I’m currently running out of keyboard shortcuts as I have assigned many of them to internal commands of TotalCmd I frequently use. I used to have my Quick Search settings to Alt+Letter but this caused a slight problem with selecting menu entries with the keyboard. A workaround here is to press just Alt which will “activate” the menus and then hit the desirable key on the keyboard but not concurrently!

As I was running out of available shortcuts I had to use the Alt for more combinations so I had to configure my Quick search settings to “Letters - with search dialog”. But in this way I’ve lost the very useful ability to automatically call the command line by just typing a letter. In a way the two settings conflict each other based on user needs and preferences in working behaviour.

A don’t know if there is a workaround that I cannot think so I’m open to your thoughts and suggestions. What I want to suggest as future feature wish from Christian because I cannot think of an alternative method is to have an internal command where with the hit of a key on the keyboard will be able to selectively activate either the command line or the quick search dialog when typing just letters. I don’t know if this is feasible or the right approach but this kind of switching can be the workaround!

Kind regards,

Panos

[TucknDar]

Sorry if I misunderstood your question, but I use the Right-Arrow key to focus on the commandline, and this can be set through the settings-dialog.

Hope this helps

[fabiochelly]

If you choose to hide the command line, you can access directly to it with the right arrow

[TucknDar]

yup, that's the way I do it.

[Hacker]

But only in full view.

Roman

[Gregory]

You can use Shift+Right Arrow in other views

[fabiochelly]

You can use CTRL + DOWN in the other views

[pdavit]

…and left arrow too! God, TC is flexible!

Well, I knew that and I guess what I’m asking is kind of extreme! I mean going through some coding effort just to skip pressing one key is kind of… well, too much of an automation! And anyway, the switching will require pressing a key combination! Thanks for the feedback anyway…

Please, Christian consider this wish overruled!

[chasbas]

I don't know, Panos - I like your idea. I use brief mode 99% and use Quick Search-letters only, but I also want to be able to use the command line without having to take my hands off the letter keys and hit Shift+Arrow and then go back to the letters.

My suggestion is that if "Quick search-letters only" is selected, then start the quick search when the first letter key is let up, rather than when it is pressed down. If the key remains depressed for, say, 1/4 second, that would activate the command line instead of a quick search (a check box could reverse this behavior for those who use the command line more often than the quick search).

This way I could have the best of both worlds, able to use the same key to do two different things depending upon how long I hold it down. Of course subsequent keys would act immediately, since TC will already know whether input is intended for quick search or command line.

[pdavit]

2 chasbas

Yeah it might be cool but still you have to admit we sound too lazy!

When I first posted this requests I had just switched from Alt+Letters for searching to Letters with a dialog box as I was running out of shortcuts, I lost the automatic invocation of the command line as a result of that but as I was used to that I never thought of pressing any of the shortcuts people suggested here so, basically I made my request without following first a deep thought of tackling the problem. Following a second thought I realised that my request was kind of... too much!

[chasbas]

Not to be too combative here, but everything good about TC is efficiency and ease of use. It's not lazy to not want to have to move both hands (shift with one and arrow with the other) off the home position just to type a command into the cl, especially when I was used to being able to do it without a second thought (back when I used Alt+letter to do quick search). In fact, I switched from Alt+letter just because it was microscopically faster to press a letter than to press alt+letter!

I still think a procedure which allows both quick search and CL input to co-exist without modifier keys or extra keystrokes is a better solution, and TC is all about better solutions.

[Gregory]

2pdavit

I have another idea. What do you think about just one more Quick Search shortcut, for example Alt alone.
Then with that shortcut if you type a letter it will be redirected to command line and if you press Alt it will show Quick Search dialog but all your shortcuts with Alt and Alt Shift will keep working.

Is that what you want?

[Hacker]

BTW: How about having something like cm_FocusCmdLine which might default to eg "~" (without Shift)?

TIA
Roman