OSX shortcuts do not work

[andreasmax]

hi,

just upgraded to the recent version of PI.
since now i am not able to get the STF via shortcut anymore (CMD+A). all the other shortcuts do not work at all also.
any suggestions?

OSX 10.11.6
standard USB keyboard

thx for the help.

andreas

[Juan Conejero]

All shortcuts work without problems on our Mac machines. This has not been reported before. Are you using a compact Apple keyboard (without numeric keypad)? In such case you may need to use a modifier key, along with the application's shortcut key combinations.

We use exclusively large Apple keyboards with numeric keypads on our Mac machines, that is, the keyboards that are more similar to standard PC keyboards. Compact Apple keyboards are not specifically supported. I'll modify the System Requirements page on our website to reflect this.

[andreasmax]

hi juan,

no, as i have written in my post, i am using the original apple USB standard keyboard (as i do not like bt-keyboards...).

had these problems with other tools in PI before the upgrade. for example: ALT+N for creating a preview never worked for me anyway.
but now i am missing the shortcut for STF really bad.
just to be clear: CMD + A means pressing CMD and pressing the letter A (lower case)? if yes: nope, does not work here. 10.11.6

andreas

[pfile]

unfortunately this problem is real and its been around for a long time. sometimes the UI ignores shortcut keystrokes... click a few more windows and menus and suddenly the shortcuts start working again.

if you use your OSX instance long enough and hard enough it will eventually get into this state.

rob

[andreasmax]

just to be clear and precise, most of the shurtcuts are broken, but not all!

those for viewing are working (CMD +, CMD - etc).

but most of the time i need the STF shortcut. a pitty...

[Juan Conejero]

I understand your frustration, but I cannot reproduce this problem on macOS. For example, Cmd+A always works, no matter how long or how hard I work on a running PixInsight instance, including very complex projects. The same is true for the rest of shortcuts. Currently I have two iMac computers at hand, one with OS X 10.10 and another one with 10.11, and keyboard shortcuts work on both.

Please provide a reproducible pattern to understand why this happens.
 

[pfile]

i can't tell you under what circumstances it happens... i just know i have had this problem intermittently since 2009. it seems to come and go with the version of PI; i think 1.8.4 did not suffer this problem... so to me this seems Qt related.

command-A, command-R/G/B/0 seem to break most often for me. a few mouse clicks later, raising/lowering windows, and the shortcuts start working again. then they randomly stop working again, etc.

rob

[andreasmax]

juan,

i am sure that you have no problems at all in that matter at your systems.
i will try out another instance of PI tomorrow at my company-mac if i can reproduce it.

i am an apple certified technician and working on mac for about 20 years and normally it is my job to get these type of problems cleared at my customers.

maybe it would be a good idea to reset the PI installation to the scratch. installing PI was already done by the upgrade. are there any local files, caches or preferences left or maybe hidden ones in the user library to delete for that?

need to clear this really...

andreas

edit: after writing this and starting PI the shortcut is working again!? did not changed anything on the settings or the system... weired.

[pfile]

as a said this problem comes and goes during a given run of pixinsight. even after restarting PI it will work at first and then eventually stop/start/stop working while you are using PI.

reinstalling PI probably will not help anything here...

rob

[msmythers]

Guys

As someone who knows nothing about OSX "at all" could it be that maybe a background program is taking control of the CMD key or maybe that PI is not able to exclusively hold the CMD key. I had an issue ages ago that a program could not use the ALT key on a program unless the program was full screen. The program was not given control even though the mouse had activated the window that the program was residing in.

Like I said I know nothing but have seen a lot of weird computer problems over the way too many years.



Mike

[andreasmax]

mike:

thx for your help. but no, do not think so.
i have a rather clean install here, no background apps working. and CMD+A is a typical command at MacOS: select all.

andreas