Hi,
I'm a moderately well-versed programmer who is taking on Objective C to handle something that annoys me to no end about OSX: no quick way to get between applications.
I know what you're thinking, but what about Command-Tab. Let's admit it, this is no good when you have iTunes, * builder, x11 and 2 chat clients open. talk about inefficient!
I came from Linux land where my favorite WM was ion. It was a full-creen, anti-mouse window manager that had a really great idea in it: you hit an escape sequence (mappable as you see fit) and you are given a command line. You type the name of the appliation and can use TAB to complete the match once you have enough unique characters (a la bash).
Example: (escape sequence) [type]i c *tab* [autocomplete] iChat *enter*
And viola! In ichat. I would like to add the suffix of "/" so that I could do the preceeding, then hit 'foom<tab>' and then have iChat's chat box with 'fooman' get the focus.
Sound handy? I think so.
OK. so the question is:
How do I map a key sequence into the OS to automatically flip to an application? In my description above i describe the 'escape sequence' -- that's what I'm after how to program.
I gather that I need to override the keyDown method in my application and listen for my 'escape sequence' combo? does that sound right? I gleaned that from: file:///Developer/Documentation/Cocoa/TasksAndConcepts/ProgrammingTopics/BasicEventHandling/index.html
I've been looking all over the O'reilly OSX books for an example of how to do this, but no luck.
developer.apple.com didn't seem to have any examples either. could someone possibly help me on this one?
Thanks for helping get another OSX app-writer / lover off on the right foot.
Steven
I'm a moderately well-versed programmer who is taking on Objective C to handle something that annoys me to no end about OSX: no quick way to get between applications.
I know what you're thinking, but what about Command-Tab. Let's admit it, this is no good when you have iTunes, * builder, x11 and 2 chat clients open. talk about inefficient!
I came from Linux land where my favorite WM was ion. It was a full-creen, anti-mouse window manager that had a really great idea in it: you hit an escape sequence (mappable as you see fit) and you are given a command line. You type the name of the appliation and can use TAB to complete the match once you have enough unique characters (a la bash).
Example: (escape sequence) [type]i c *tab* [autocomplete] iChat *enter*
And viola! In ichat. I would like to add the suffix of "/" so that I could do the preceeding, then hit 'foom<tab>' and then have iChat's chat box with 'fooman' get the focus.
Sound handy? I think so.
OK. so the question is:
How do I map a key sequence into the OS to automatically flip to an application? In my description above i describe the 'escape sequence' -- that's what I'm after how to program.
I gather that I need to override the keyDown method in my application and listen for my 'escape sequence' combo? does that sound right? I gleaned that from: file:///Developer/Documentation/Cocoa/TasksAndConcepts/ProgrammingTopics/BasicEventHandling/index.html
I've been looking all over the O'reilly OSX books for an example of how to do this, but no luck.
developer.apple.com didn't seem to have any examples either. could someone possibly help me on this one?
Thanks for helping get another OSX app-writer / lover off on the right foot.
Steven