Would The Ctrl-Y - Repeat Feature Be Useful In Flare?

[pcalnan]

Not sure if I should submit this as a feature request yet as I don't know if this is just my laziness speaking or if this would actually be useful or not.

I think it's just an MS-Office feature but after formatting stuff, pressing Ctrl-Y allows you to repeat the same formatting on a different block of text (or contents of a cell in Excel).

I've found this to be a very useful tool in the past if I have to do any sort of repetitive formatting.

Would anybody else other than myself think this might be cool to have in Flare?

Cheers,

[KevinDAmery]

I think it's just Excel that does that. Other applications (including Word, FWIW) use Ctrl+Y as \"Redo,\" which is also what Flare does.

What I would like in Flare is a way to assign keyboard shortcuts to styles or classes. This would let you do what you're asking about here, but also would let you apply other styles quickly. I could certainly use it to apply heading levels and certain classes quickly (although I wouldn't need it for every style in the list: just the ones I use frequently). Since everyone's stylesheet is different, the KB shortcuts would have to be user-definable to be of real use.

I've requested this one before. Feel free to request it as well: the more interest from us, the more likely Madcap is to put it in.

[RussGuill]

No, Word handles Ctrl-Y as a repeat command. I have requested this for Flare because I'd use it quite a bit (as I do in Word).

[LTinker68]

The problem with a \"repeat style change\" command is that it would apply inline formatting, which eliminates some of the advantage of using stylesheets in the first place. If there's a particular type of style you'd like to be able to use whenever you want, then I recommend creating a generic class -- that way you can apply it to any tag but still be able to change all instances of it at once by changing that class in the stylesheet.

[SteveS]

Maybe what we need is something similar to Office's Format Painter.

A button we can toggle on/ off (you double click it in Word etc) to copy an element's style and then apply it to each element you select.

I know we can almost do that from the Styles tab, but you have to scroll through your <p> styles each time and the format painter is a one click solution.

[LTinker68]

But again, that's going to apply the style inline to that tag in that topic and not make it available to the other topics. At least, not without opening a topic, copying the style, opening the topic you want to apply it to, then applying it to the appropriate spot, then saving the topic, then opening the next topic, and so on.

Now if it asked if you wanted to create a generic class containing the style elements that have been copied, then that would be good.

And keep in mind that generic classes show up in the Styles pane for every tag (regardless of whether you're in a paragraph, heading, or list, etc.), so technically all you have to do is select the tag or text then click the generic class in the Styles pane (or the Styles drop-down menu) to apply the class. So you have the feature now, if not via a keyboard shortcut.

[KevinDAmery]

No, Word handles Ctrl-Y as a repeat command. I have requested this for Flare because I'd use it quite a bit (as I do in Word).

That's funny, in my copy of Word 2003 it sez right in the Edit menu that Ctrl+Y is redo. Plus I just did this test:

- type the word "great"
- hit Ctrl+Z = "great" disappears
- hit Ctrl+Y = "great" reappears
- hit Ctrl+Y again = nothing happens

What are you doing that does repeat?

EDIT: Ok, now I see. Ctrl+Y in Word works as repeat IF you haven't undone anything first. If you have undone something then it acts as redo, as the interface says. Interesting.....

[pcalnan]

Thanks the responses, folks, an interesting conversation.

Btw, I don't think that Ctrl-Y is limited to just applying styles as you can use it for just about any repetitive task. Yes, I know about snippets and all that but there are times when you're doing something over and over in a topic where a keyboard macro can save wear and tear on ye olde muscles and ligaments.

As a further aside, I also use a shareware keyboard macro utility called KeyText that has proven to be very useful. Not a steep learning curve and really helps when you're having to do the same thing a bunch of times.

Cheers!

[Marc]

Just as another aside:

In Word, F4 repeats the most recent command/keystrokes.

[heather r]

I would find this useful.
In word I use F4 as much as I can to repeat the last operation. I wouldn't be opposed to CTRL-Y.
But Frame has a good one, too - ESC+JJ . ESC+JJ applies the most recently applied paragraph tag. So even if you did some other editing (typing, deleting, so on) you still the last tag ready to use. That would be a good feature.

[SteveS]

Hi Heather,

Welcome to the forums.

In case you haven't noticed in the other posts, Madcap has a place where you can lodge bugs and enhancement requests. Apparrently, the more peolpe who request an enhancement, the more likely it is to get attention. The URL is https://www.madcapsoftware.com/bugs/submit.aspx. One would hope a single notification of a bug would suffice, but who knows?

[i-tietz]

jep - reported an enhancement request, too.

[Andrew Heard]

I put in an RFE for an F4-type function. There seems to be a lot of support for this. Let's hope it's reasonably easy to implement.

[i-tietz]

No good news for Flare V6 ...

[forfear]

What I would like in Flare is a way to assign keyboard shortcuts to styles or classes. This would let you do what you're asking about here, but also would let you apply other styles quickly. I could certainly use it to apply heading levels and certain classes quickly (although I wouldn't need it for every style in the list: just the ones I use frequently). Since everyone's stylesheet is different, the KB shortcuts would have to be user-definable to be of real use.

I've requested this one before. Feel free to request it as well: the more interest from us, the more likely Madcap is to put it in.

I second that. In fact. I'll post one up on this, while I post one more on support for the Open Type format.

[doc_guy]

< >
The restriction on Open Type fonts is a problem with the .NET framework, which is Microsoft's fault, not Flare's. It is unfortunate to have that restriction, but since Flare is built on .NET, you inherit .NETs flaws (or bugs, depending on how you see them).

Not saying you shouldn't log a bug. Just pointing out that I doubt this is something that is going to be addressed until MS addresses it in .NET.

</ >

[RamonS]

The limitation is removed in .NET 3.x and in the future Flare will use that. Currently, .NET is used as there are some customers using the speedy Windows 2000.

[LTinker68]

Actually, beginning with Flare v5 I, think (maybe v4), you had to be running .NET 3.0 or higher. I believe it states 3.5 for v6. So if the limitation was .NET below v3.0 and v6 requires 3.5, then they should be able to support it at this point.

[RamonS]

I go by what support wrote me. We have to rebrand all documents at work and I gave a hand with making a few new ones. The "corporate" font is only available as Type 1 font and even after installing it didn't show up in Flare V6. I asked support and this is the response:

David,
I know we dont support all of them, but have you tried to manually type in the font name when assigning a font? We've found that "sometimes" it works depending on the font maker and attributes.
Its still a bug we want to get addressed either in a point release or next version. Once we move our software over to DotNet 3, this should no longer be an issue.

I ended up using Calibri because corporate marketing advised against using the "corporate font" because nobody aside corporate marketing has that font installed on their system. You gotta love rebranding.....

[Paul Griffiths]

I ended up using Calibri because corporate marketing advised against using the "corporate font" because nobody aside corporate marketing has that font installed on their system.

Replace Calibri with Tahoma, and that's exactly our situation.