Shortcut and hotkeys

[goorawin]

I am trying to setup a shortcut or hotkeys to start reading from the cursor but none of the shortcut keys are working, including F4, F5, F6 or F7.
I have setup hotkeys to pause, resume and stop, but there is no way to start without using one of the TextAloud buttons.
I'm on Windows 10 Pro current version.
Any suggestions?
Thanks
goorawin

[Jim Bretti]

It sounds like you may be mixing shortcuts and hotkeys. Shortcuts only work inside the TextAloud application, and configured in Shortcut Setup. For example, by default, F4 is the default shortcut for "Speak From Cursor Aloud", under the Speak button.

Hotkeys work system wide, and are configured in Hotkey Setup. There currently is not a system wide hotkey that supports speak from cursor. The only way to speak text in another application with a hotkey is the Read Text Aloud hotkey, which will only speak selected text in other apps.

Does that help? If not please give me more information on what you are trying to configure.

[goorawin]

Shortcuts only work inside the TextAloud application, and configured in Shortcut Setup
That is exactly where it is not working. I only use the TextAloud application for the work I do.
Thanks

[Jim Bretti]

Thanks that helps. I'm not seeing any problems with keyboard shortcuts myself, so I'm going to need a little more information. Can you let me know if TextAloud is saving your shortcut changes in the dialog? For example, change a shortcut, or add a shortcut to an item that does not have a shortcut assigned. Click the OK button to close the Settings dialog and save your changes. Then display settings dialog, and see if your new shortcut shows up.

Also, exit and restart TextAloud, and make sure the new shortcut still shows up in settings.

So let me know if TextAloud is having trouble saving the shortcut.

Also, here is one other thing to try. Just as a test, display Settings -> Shortcut Setup. The very first entry in the list is "Open", with the default shortcut Ctrl+O. Are you able to change that to Ctrl+Alt+O ? I'm able to do that here, just wondering if you are able to do the same.

[goorawin]

At first none of the shortcuts I tried worked but once I changed a number of the shortcut some started to work.
However after much testing it appears that any shortcut that uses a function key does not work at all.
So by replacing those function keys with other keys I have been able to get them to work OK.
Yes, I can change the shortcut of the first entry "Open", and that works.
So there appears to be a problem with function keys, maybe just on my computer. I haven't tested another keyboard yet which I must do, but I hadn't noticed any problems before.
I'll let you know when I find out more.

[Jim Bretti]

I can't explain that yet, function keys should work. I'll do some checking. Are the default shortcuts under the speak menu (F4 thru F8) working for you?

I wonder if there is a problem with the text file used by TextAloud to save menu and toolbar settings. You might try this: under the TextAloud menu click Help -> Open Data Folder. Leave that folder open, and exit TextAloud. In the data folder, move the file Preferences.xml to another folder (you can just move the file to your desktop). Then restart TextAloud and see if that makes a difference. Removing this file will reset your toolbar and menu (including all shortcuts) to their default settings.

[adibitar69]

The simplest keyboard shortcuts consist of only one key. For these, one generally just writes out the name of the key, as in the message "Press F1 for Help".
For instance, Microsoft differentiates keyboard shortcuts from hotkeys whereby the former consists of a specific key combination used to trigger an action, and the latter represents a designated letter in a menu command or toolbar button that when pressed together with the Alt key.