Why no alt(f)ile, alt(a)save as in MS?

• Feb 11, 2016 - 21:54

This has niggled at me for a long time. All other programs that I use on my windows machine allow an easy 2 stroke gesture to open the file window. However MS doesn't recognize the alt (a).

I would find it extremely useful.


Comments

Are you sure about those shortcuts? "Alt" shortcuts in Windows are generally to access *menus*, not *dialogs*. Alt+F will access the File menu, but Alt+A accesses the Add menu. This works for me.

There is no single "file window". However, the *save* dialog is accessed in MuseScore - as with virtually all programs - by Ctrl+S, whereas the *open* dialog is accessed with Ctrl+O. Again, these should all be exactly the same as virtually all other Windows programs.

"Save As" is the one shortcut that isn't as standardized as it could be. Ctrl+A is not available because that is "Select All" in virtually all Windows programs, so programs that wish to provide a shortcut for "Save As" need to do something different. MuseScore uses "Ctrl+Shift+S", which you can see by simply going to the File menu and seeing what is listed as the shortcut to the right of the command name.

In reply to by xavierjazz

Yes, I understand now too. These are called "mnemonics", and actually, you don't need to keep holding "Alt" for them to work. That is, you press Alt+F" to access the File menu, then just press "A" (no need to keep "Alt" pressed) to access whatever item in the menu has the letter "A" underlined. But there is a bug where even though we have tried to define mnemonics for many menu items, they don't work for certain letters, such as A-G (presumably because those letters are hardcoded to note input). So that's why "Alt+F, A" doesn't work for "Save As". It's defined to work in the code, but the bug prevents it from working with the letters A-G. Works fine for Alt+F, R though, for examle.

But Ctrl+Shift+S definitely should work as a direct shortcut to "Save As".

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