Red Sweater Forums

Hi - this is a new issue to me. I haven't seen this happening. It will help a lot of if we can try to gather some more information. I'm curious as to whether either of you can find any suspicious output in the Console log on your Mac around the time of the attempted shortcut changes?

In general, you should always be able to edit a script's shortcut by double-clicking the item in the Shortcuts pane. To delete a shortcut, you can hit the "delete" key while editing the shortcut, instead of entering any particular shortcut.

If the shortcut edit is showing up but the text is not changing from "none" when you hit something, then the most likely cause is that something else is already set up to use that shortcut. For instance, if you've got another program installed that claims that shortcut, FastScripts may not be able to override it, and when you hit the key combo, that other application will be doing something and FastScripts will never get the keys.

I think there are several improvements that could be made to the Shortcuts pane so it's more intutiive, but if you are hitting an unclaimed keystroke and FastScripts is not responding as expected, it's definitely a bug. Let me know if either of you can find any more clues from your Console logs.

Thanks!

Daniel

Thanks, NovaScotian. That console log really helped! It definitely identified one problem and hopefully that is what has been affecting you. Notice how it says it couldn't find your script editor application? That failure caused a chain reaction which ultimately caused the Preference dialog to not get prepared correctly. After that happened, all bets are off. I changed the code to be more resilient to "editor not found" situations like this. Can you please try with this beta version of FastScripts?

http://www.red-sweater.com/RedSweater/FastScripts2.2.6b1.zip

It looks like you at one point had BBEdit configured as your shell script editor, but that app has since been deleted or is otherwise not locatable on your computer. You might want to reset the "Shell Script Editor" preference by selecting an app that is present on your computer, now. Before you do that, though, I'd love to know whether the above beta-release addresses your problem.

Thanks!

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut said:

Thanks, NovaScotian. That console log really helped! It definitely identified one problem and hopefully that is what has been affecting you. Notice how it says it couldn't find your script editor application? That failure caused a chain reaction which ultimately caused the Preference dialog to not get prepared correctly. After that happened, all bets are off. I changed the code to be more resilient to "editor not found" situations like this. Can you please try with this beta version of FastScripts?

http://www.red-sweater.com/RedSweater/FastScripts2.2.6b1.zip

It looks like you at one point had BBEdit configured as your shell script editor, but that app has since been deleted or is otherwise not locatable on your computer. You might want to reset the "Shell Script Editor" preference by selecting an app that is present on your computer, now. Before you do that, though, I'd love to know whether the above beta-release addresses your problem.

Thanks!

Daniel

I had upgraded BBEdit to version 8 from 7 and neglected to "inform" FastScripts.

The beta (2.2.6b1) fixed one of the two I reported. Now I can enter and modify the key.
The other was my fault - I discovered (but had missed) that I have a QuicKey assigned to the same keys, so QK was grabbing my code before it got to FS.

Final answer - Thanks; your beta works, and after testing that, I reset my shell script editor to BBEdit8 which works also.

Eventually, I'm going to stop using QK which is a shadow of its former (preOSX) self, and do all of it's current functions from FS and AS. The one thing holding me back is that QK runs an AppleScript entered as text as a step in a sequence without running the script itself so there is no wait for a script application to open. I don't know how they do that, but it's a power feature.

Daniel said:

It's theoretically possible that FastScripts could be modified to support arbitrary script text as an "action". Note however, that when you save a script as "script" (not an application) and run it from FastScripts, you should get about the same speed as raw text, *after the first run*. When you run a plain AppleScript file in FastScripts, it keeps that script in memory, so that any time you run the script again, it doesn't need to be loaded from the disk again.

This should theoretically allow for comparable execution speeds between FS and QK for this purpose.

Thanks... I didn't know that. Seems to me though that you only have to give me the option of marking a script to be kept in memory after the first run (and reloaded after a restart) so it'll always run immediately. If I want to free up memory, I'll unmark it (in preferences perhaps). That would be great for my e-mail notifier script for example, which I run many times a day, for one that checks on a server, for another that gets me the latest exchange rates, etc.

Daniel Jalkut said:

FastScriptGuy: If you think this might be the same problem that is affecting you, then I encourage you to try the beta release posted above. If not, please check your console and see if there is anything interesting there. If you're not familiar with the console, you can open it from /Applications/Utilities/Console.app. Look in the log for anything near the bottom that shows FastScripts in the line...

Thanks!
Daniel

Hi there, I installed the new beta you have here, logged out and in again, and I can now make a short cut but the only time it worked, unexpectedly, is when the preference pane was open and I invoked the shortcut a couple of times in a row. I went to the console and I do not see anything at all in there about FastScripts.

I've discovered (using the beta version) that storage of a shortcut is not necessarily a sure thing unless the script is opened for editing (option-clicked) and run in the script editor. Somehow, that "registers" the script with FS and a subsequent selection (command-click) will "take". I know this is fuzzy, but it seems to work. If this step is neglected, the change may appear in the preferences shortcuts pane, but it might not keep.

Daniel Jalkut said:

That's very interesting, Nova. The only thing I can think is that for some reason the script in question is not compiled at first, and then when you open and run it in Script Editor, it gets compiled.

That's true. I've been moving scripts entered as text in QK that existed as compiled scripts under the FS menu and saving them in my Scripts Folder as .scpt files (FS starts scripts saved as .app so there's a wait to get it going and show its icon in the dock, but scripts saved as .scpt seem to run immediately). For each of these, just compiling them didn't seem to be enough - I had to actually run them once before the FS shortcut key worked properly.

Daniel further said:

Now that's it's been run once in Script Editor, can you change keystrokes at will in FastScripts?

Yes. The preferences shortcut pane works perfectly. Must have something to do with the way the Script Editor saves scripts.

No need to thank me - I like this software and want it to work as well as you do.

Adam