Proofing on the Mac

Note This page was last updated in 2007. Regarding rectangular selection, while is is available in some applications, it is not available in all, and does not work in the DP wiki or either Proofreading interface in FF, Safari or Chrome on a Mac in 2020. Page should be reviewed to see if some of the information should be added to more current pages.

Cutting and Pasting rectangular blocks of text

On the mac, we can easily move around rectangular blocks of text, which is especially useful for Fixing run-on columns (and, in the Formatting rounds, for Formatting tables). Just hold down Option (=alt) and the cursor will change into a cross with which you can highlight an area of text, to cut and paste as normal. Just for fun, try editing this page and moving the following blocks one underneath the other:

AAAAAA  aaaaaaa  111111  
BBBBBBB  bbbbbb  222222
CCCCCC  cccccc  333333
DDDDDD dddddd  444444

The Built-In Dictionary

Sometimes during proofing you need to look up a word -- perhaps the scan is a bit splodgy, or perhaps you're just curious about the meaning. Anyway, you can look it up without leaving the proofing interface: just hover your mouse over the word in the text, and press cmd-ctrl-d. A little window will appear with the definition of the word. If you click More, then Dictionary will open.

Shortcuts for typing

There are a number of programs for the mac that allow you to define a sequence of keystrokes to be a shortcut for something. For example, I use Textpander and have it set up so that if I type !* I get ×. It can be useful in a lot of contexts (I have a shortcut for a lengthy regex that I can never remember, and one for ftping to dpscans) but in the proofing interface the most likely use is to make shortcuts for Latin-1 symbols that don't have built-in keyboard shortcuts. Programs to try:

• Textpander (old free version; has now become commercial TextExpander at about $30)
• Rapidowrite (free!)
• TypeIt4Me (about $27)
• Typinator (about $20)