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beverson · Sep 7, 2001, 05:06 PM

I'm seeing an oddity with keyboard shorcuts requiring the option key. It's most noticable in Photoshop and AOL Instant Messenger, both of which use the option key in combination with the 's' key (Save for Web and Sign Off repsectively). Neither shortcut works! This has been happening for a while, and I can't really trace it to any software installation. I checked the Keyboard CP, and none of those settings seem to be blocking option. And option does work in some instances...for example, when using it as a modifyer key in Photoshop to alter the selected tool, it works just fine! So it's clearly not defective hardware.

I'm stumped. Anyone ever seen this before? BTW -- it's a G4 500 with 256 MB of RAM running 9.1.

B.I.L · Sep 8, 2001, 02:04 PM

Do you have Suitcase installed? By default it is set to use Cmd-Opt-S to launch. Uncheck the option in Suitcase prefs.

beverson · Sep 9, 2001, 09:46 PM

Originally posted by B.I.L:
<STRONG>Do you have Suitcase installed? By default it is set to use Cmd-Opt-S to launch. Uncheck the option in Suitcase prefs.</STRONG>

Nope -- no Suitcase. We use ATM. And I don't remember it having that shortcut.

I am afraid that so many different things could be causing this and thus it will be very difficult to troubleshoot. Still, I don't think I can trace it to anything I've installed recently, so I don't know where the heck to even start.

oscar · Sep 10, 2001, 06:00 AM

Id physically clean the option key, and make sure you can get the option key activated more often, to see if thats the problem

beverson · Sep 10, 2001, 09:05 AM

Originally posted by oscar:
<STRONG>Id physically clean the option key, and make sure you can get the option key activated more often, to see if thats the problem</STRONG>

It's definitely not a problem with the option key. Option works fine when I hold it to hide an app or close all Finder windows with one click and whatnot. And like I said above, when held down the option key correctly changes the current tool in Photoshop.

It just seems to be a combo of command, option, and S that won't work. Baffling.

beverson · Sep 10, 2001, 01:17 PM

Okay, I'm an idiot.

It turns out it WAS new software that caused it, though I SWEAR I'd seen this problem sometime before last week when I installed it. Anyway, the culprit was PGP Desktop, which has command-option shortcuts assigned to like 4 or 5 different tasks. The weird thing is that PGP Desktop only works with certain applications by default, and you can set it up to work with others, but there are some like Photoshop you wouldn't ever need it to work with. And you'd think for those apps it would let the shortcut keystroke drop through to the active application (PGP Desktop has an extension that loads at startup), but no, it eats it. Crappy. Fortunately, though, you're not stuck with the default shortcuts and can reassign them to anything (well anything not taken by the system I would guess). Even better, you can also delete them and the commands no longer have assigned keyboard shortcuts. Since I rarely use PGP Desktop, but absolutely need to have it running all the time, this was by far the best option.

So yeah, everything's fine again. Thanks for all the help.