Exploring QuicKeys X2 Using Clips Shortcuts

August 2004 Exploring QuicKeys Clips Shortcut (Mac OS X)

The introduction, general description of the Clips shortcut, and some of its potential uses were covered in the August 2004 issue of TRIGGERED. This web page is meant to provide more detailed instructions on how to set up the shortcut itself. These instructions assume you are using QuicKeys X2 running on Mac OS X 10.2 or newer.

Gather ye text clips while ye may...

Let's just jump right in and look at the Clips shortcut setup window. Open QuicKeys Editor and select System -> Clips from the Create menu. The resulting window has the controls needed to make either a Gather/Collect Clips shortcut or a Retrieve/Insert Clips shortcut. Let's build our Gather/Copy shortcut first:

1. Typically you will want to create a clip from whatever you have selected/highlighted in your front application, so mark the upper two radio buttons as shown.

2. At this point you can create Groups to help organize your clips as you collect them. You can create new Clips Groups at any time though, even on-the-fly as you gather new clips. Let's go ahead and make two groups.

3. Click the New Clip Group... button and name the group "addresses" and click OK. Click the New Clip Group button again type "colors" and click OK.

4. Assign the trigger you want to use to activate this shortcut. Since this shortcut is basically a type of "copy" action, I use control-C as my hotkey combo to Copy/Create a new clip. Depending on if you are using Advanced or Simple Triggers you will see one of the two examples to the right when you have completed assigning the hotkey trigger.

You will want to make sure this trigger is scoped to "All Applications," this is very important! If you scope a shortcut to a specific application then that shortcut will only function in that application. Scoping your Clips shortcuts to something other than All Applications would greatly limit their usefulness!

5. Close and save the shortcut, name it something like "Clip Create" or "Clip Copy" and we're done.

Get 'em while they're hot!

Now that we have a way to collect and store clips, we need a way to retrieve them as well. Again, let's just jump right in and take a look at a typical Clips shortcut window as set up for retrieval. Open QuicKeys Editor and select System -> Clips from the Create menu.

1. We need to set the radio buttons as shown in the figure to the left to make this shortcut retrieve and type/insert stored clips. There are two retrieval options, Paste and Type. Paste is the faster of the two, but may not be supported properly by some (typically older) applications. Type is a bit slower (significantly slower on older systems) but should work where Paste does not. Which one do you need? It's hard to say in advance, so let's just use the Paste method for its superior speed.

2. You'll notice that you can select one of your Clips Groups at this point, (either "address" or "colors") or not at all. This is simply a convenience allowing you to pre-select from which group you will pull clips when the shortcut is triggered. If you don't have any clips groups, or don't want to be specific about which clip group is pre-selected, don't worry about selecting a clip group here.

3. The "Make apps recognize clip actions" checkbox at the bottom of this shortcut window might need to be activated if you're having trouble getting some of your programs to accept data from your Paste/Insert style Clips shortcut. Some applications use their own custom clipboard rather than the system clipboard, and these applications will insert old data from their own clipboards rather than the data from your selected Clip. Checking this box forces those apps to check for new data in the system clipboard rather than just blindly doing their own thing.

4. Assign the trigger you want to use to activate this shortcut. Since this shortcut is basically a type of "paste" action, I use control-V as my hotkey combo to Paste/Retrieve a new clip.

5. Give your new clips retriever a name and close it up, it's time to test these shortcuts!

Populating your Clips collection

We now have the bare essentials for a working clips storage and retrieval system in place, one shortcut to gather and sort the clips, and one to retrieve them from the compiled groupings. Open your TextEdit application and create a new document so we can get started loading data into your clips collection.

Type your name and mailing address in the TextEdit document. Format it however you would normally format this information. Select/Highlight your name and mailing address with your mouse, and hit your Clips Copy hotkey (I used control-C for the hotkey in my example above). This should bring up the window to the right:

1. In the upper portion of the window you will see the clip data to be stored. If this looks to be in order:

2. Name the clip. Since we are saving an address, let's also select the "address" clip group.

3. If you are building your collection of stored clips and realize you need a new category/clips group, just hit the New Clip Group button and create one on the fly!

Click Save and you're done. Go ahead and create a couple more addresses in TextEdit, copying each one into your "address" Clips Group and naming them appropriately.

Bring out your Clips!

Let's select everything in your TextEdit document and delete it so we have a clean slate. Now hit your Paste Clip hotkey trigger (I used control-V in my example above), you'll see the following dialog:

1. There are two ways to choose the clip you'd like to insert. Obviously there is your mouse, but you can also use your keyboard. This window supports "Type-to" so any key you hit will jump the selected item to match that key. i.e. in the example image to the left, if I push my "A" key, the selected clip will jump to "Apple." I can also use my up/down arrow keys to traverse the list, or us my left/right arrow keys to move from the category box to the clips box and back.

2. After choosing the clip you want, just hit return/enter or click the paste button. QuicKeys shoves that clip's data to the system clipboard which then pastes the data into TextEdit. Works like a charm in TextEdit and the vast majority of apps, but as you recall I mentioned that some programs don't use the system clipboard as expected and may paste old data or nothing at all...

3. If you run into the situation of your paste/insert clip shortcut not working in a given application, hit your Paste Clip hotkey again but check the "Make apps accept paste" box after you choose your desired clip. If this doesn't work, try changing the radio button from Paste Clip to Type Clip on your next attempt. Being able to change these items on the fly puts a lot of power and flexibility at your fingertips, but once you identify programs that don't handle clip pasting properly, you can create a new kind of Clips shortcut, changing the default radio button selection from Paste to Type for example.

If you scope this new Type Clip shortcut to work only in the problematic applications and give it the same hotkey as your more universal Paste Clip shortcut, you can seamlessly make use of Clips in all of your programs by hitting just the one hotkey.

Had enough yet?

Clips are quite flexible and powerful as you can see! I've covered the basics and hinted at how to access some of the more advanced uses if you are a bit creative in setting these shortcuts up. One thing I didn't mention was the fact that Clips Groups are hierarchical, meaning you can create groups within groups. For example, your "addresses" Clips Group can house additional sub-groups, perhaps named "personal" and "company" and "vendors" so you can more easily locate the address clip you're looking for.

The Type Clip speed slider is something else that might have caught your eye. If you are using an older machine or constantly working your G5 hard enough for the fans to be running at "ShopVac" speed, you may need to retard the speed at which QuicKeys tries to type so the system's typing buffer can keep up. This can be done by changing the slider in QuicKeys' general preferences, or by changing the slider in any individual shortcut which types text rather than pastes.

The Clips shortcut is the lion to Type Text's house cat. Hopefully this tutorial has helped you better understand the power and convenience of using Clips instead of, or in conjunction with, Type Text.

Good luck and have fun!