ButtonKey is an cdev (control panel) which helps you to use dialog and alert boxes without using the mouse. When ButtonKey is running, simply typing the first few characters of a button’s name will have the same effect as a click on the button (for “button”, read button, check box or radio button).
In the control panel, you can set ButtonKey to be on or off, to ignore the case of typed letters, to treat the default and cancel buttons specially (see below) and to treat the escape key (ESC) as a click on the Cancel button (the Cancel button is the button whose name begins with the word “Cancel” or whose name ends with the command and period characters. You can also set which modifier keys ButtonKey will expect (see below).
Same first character?
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If two or more buttons have the same first character, ButtonKey won’t activate either when you type the character: the keystroke will just be ignored. If you’re quick, though, you can type more characters of the button’s name to identify one button uniquely. It’s similar to the way Standard File works. The default and Cancel buttons may be treated specially (see below).
Modifier keys
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If the dialog on the screen has no editable items, ButtonKey will normally intercept all keystrokes to see if they match buttons. If the dialog has editable items, ButtonKey can’t do this, as you wouldn’t be able to type any letter which began a button. You can set ButtonKey to expect either the command or control keys together with the button character and to pass non-modified keys through to the main program. If you like, ButtonKey will insist on modifier keys in dialogs without editable items as well (check the “Apply to those without editable items also” check box). The standard Open… dialog is always treated as a dialog with editable items, although it doesn’t have any, since unmodified keystrokes have other meanings. If you don’t specifically tell ButtonKey to look for the command key, command-modified keystrokes are passed through to the application without being looked at. The reason for this is that some applications accept command keystrokes which might be the same as those used to activate buttons (command-O in Suitcase II’s main dialog is a good example).
Default and Cancel special
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If any other button begins with the same letter as the default (boldly outlined) button, ButtonKey will ignore the default button and treat a keypress as a click on the other button. If no other button begins with the same letter, ButtonKey will activate the default button. The same applies to the button whose name begins with “Cancel”. The reason for this is that there are usually other key alternatives for these buttons (return, enter, command-period, escape etc).
Configuration
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Some dialogs (such as the text entry boxes of FreeHand and TypeStyler) seem to have editable items but in fact don’t. It’s useful to be able to configure these boxes individually, since if you don’t, you can’t type an A into FreeHand’s box (it gets interpreted as a click on the Apply button) or a T into TypeStyler’s. To get round this, you can configure ButtonKey for any individual dialog box by typing capslock-shift-delete while the box is onscreen. ButtonKey’s own dialog pops up for you to do the configuring. Clicking on the “Use control panel settings” button removes ButtonKey’s special entry for that dialog. This facility sometimes doesn’t seem to work too well for dialogs in some DA’s (particularly Suitcase II).
Control Panel
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If the frontmost window is called “Control Panel”, ButtonKey will be inactive (except for its own dialog, of course). The reason for this lies in the way the control panel passes events to cdevs and there’s no obvious workaround. Sorry. (This doesn’t apply under system 7, of course.)
ButtonKey has been used extensively with many different applications and no incompatibilities have been found (yet!) with applications or other INITs. Version 1.2 (this version) will work properly with system 7 (version 1.1 didn't work very well if it was kept in the Control Panels folder). v1.2 also contains code to work around a bug in the 128k ROMs which caused crashes on Pluses and Classics.It’s a very long time since any program crashed as a result of ButtonKey—if I thought there was any likelihood of its happening, I wouldn’t have released ButtonKey, but if it happens, I apologise. However, I accept no liability for any losses consequent upon such problems.
If you come across any bugs, or have any suggestions for improving ButtonKey, please let me know, either by email to jeremyr@dcs.qmw.ac.uk (Internet) or jeremyr@qmw-dcs.uucp (UUCP) or by snailmail to 88 Oxhey Avenue, Oxhey, Watford, WD1 4HA, England.
