Upgrade StorageZotero 7 Beta: Back/Forward shortcuts do not work in pt-PT ISO keyboard/system language on macOS
Hi!
I'm using a Portuguese (Portugal) keyboard on macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, and running my system in said language, and I have an issue with keyboard shortcuts in Zotero's PDF reader.
It seems that Zotero team very appropriately copied, by default, the Back/Forward shortcuts from Safari and Preview, i.e. Command+[ and Command+] respectively. It just so happens that Portuguese keyboards do not have these characters as standalone keys, which renders these key combinations unusable. Apple has solved this issue by replacing them, by default, with Command+Ç and Command+~ respectively when having the system configured for pt-PT and using the corresponding keyboard, both of which fittingly correspond to the same keys where [ and ] are located in ANSI keyboards. Priority was given, as is usually the case on macOS and Apple's first-party apps, to language-agnostic physical consistency, which is great for muscle memory and, IMHO, an advantage over Microsoft's usual approach to shortcut localisation.
Now, I'm facing a bit of a weird situation here; before I even figured out Safari's and Preview's default behaviour (I've been performing such navigation operations with Apple's mouse and trackpad gestures for over a decade now!), I manually added Adobe Acrobat's navigation shortcuts (Command+Left arrow and Command+Right arrow), on System Settings.app > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, to Zotero, and I got the expected behaviour, but I've since deleted them from the list and… they're still functional, instead of whatever weird, undocumented behaviour these shortcuts had prior to me adding said custom config? Do I have to reboot my machine or reset Zotero's preferences to get rid of these zombie shortcuts?
Anyway, the TL;DR behind my request is this: I'm producing a highly hypertextual PhD thesis, as is my common practice on such complex documents, and, as the Back function is essential for my readers not to get utterly lost, I wanted to give some pointers on the introductory chapters to digital-first readers who might be perusing (or even evaluating!) my thesis in Acrobat Reader/Pro (the stupid “new Acrobat experience” pretty much forces people to either go to the View > Page Navigation menu or use keyboard shortcuts), Preview, whatever PDF viewer thingy that comes with Windows, Zotero (fortunately, there is a Back button but sadly no Forward one and seemingly no way to add one to the toolbar) and (ugh) Mendeley Desktop.
I don't know what your plans for the future are but, seeing how Zotero caters to a global market, I would hope its default navigation shortcuts worked, out-of-the-box, on any OS and system language/keyboard layout. Thanks!
P.S.: As a beta tester who likes to contribute directly to all manner of software, I noticed that there are some strings which are still not translated to Portuguese. I'd happily contribute to the project with Transifex and all, and I'm wondering if keyboard shortcuts are a part of that process or not. I've never studied UX formally for more than one semester, but this detail in particular (localisation and its relation to UX) is very near and dear to me, so… yeah, if that's something I can help with, hit me up!
I'm using a Portuguese (Portugal) keyboard on macOS Sonoma 14.4.1, and running my system in said language, and I have an issue with keyboard shortcuts in Zotero's PDF reader.
It seems that Zotero team very appropriately copied, by default, the Back/Forward shortcuts from Safari and Preview, i.e. Command+[ and Command+] respectively. It just so happens that Portuguese keyboards do not have these characters as standalone keys, which renders these key combinations unusable. Apple has solved this issue by replacing them, by default, with Command+Ç and Command+~ respectively when having the system configured for pt-PT and using the corresponding keyboard, both of which fittingly correspond to the same keys where [ and ] are located in ANSI keyboards. Priority was given, as is usually the case on macOS and Apple's first-party apps, to language-agnostic physical consistency, which is great for muscle memory and, IMHO, an advantage over Microsoft's usual approach to shortcut localisation.
Now, I'm facing a bit of a weird situation here; before I even figured out Safari's and Preview's default behaviour (I've been performing such navigation operations with Apple's mouse and trackpad gestures for over a decade now!), I manually added Adobe Acrobat's navigation shortcuts (Command+Left arrow and Command+Right arrow), on System Settings.app > Keyboard > Keyboard Shortcuts, to Zotero, and I got the expected behaviour, but I've since deleted them from the list and… they're still functional, instead of whatever weird, undocumented behaviour these shortcuts had prior to me adding said custom config? Do I have to reboot my machine or reset Zotero's preferences to get rid of these zombie shortcuts?
Anyway, the TL;DR behind my request is this: I'm producing a highly hypertextual PhD thesis, as is my common practice on such complex documents, and, as the Back function is essential for my readers not to get utterly lost, I wanted to give some pointers on the introductory chapters to digital-first readers who might be perusing (or even evaluating!) my thesis in Acrobat Reader/Pro (the stupid “new Acrobat experience” pretty much forces people to either go to the View > Page Navigation menu or use keyboard shortcuts), Preview, whatever PDF viewer thingy that comes with Windows, Zotero (fortunately, there is a Back button but sadly no Forward one and seemingly no way to add one to the toolbar) and (ugh) Mendeley Desktop.
I don't know what your plans for the future are but, seeing how Zotero caters to a global market, I would hope its default navigation shortcuts worked, out-of-the-box, on any OS and system language/keyboard layout. Thanks!
P.S.: As a beta tester who likes to contribute directly to all manner of software, I noticed that there are some strings which are still not translated to Portuguese. I'd happily contribute to the project with Transifex and all, and I'm wondering if keyboard shortcuts are a part of that process or not. I've never studied UX formally for more than one semester, but this detail in particular (localisation and its relation to UX) is very near and dear to me, so… yeah, if that's something I can help with, hit me up!
Both Cmd-[ / ] and Cmd–LeftArrow/RightArrow are bound to Back/Forward — setting the arrow keys in System Settings wasn't necessary. We can look into localizing [ and ], but you can just tell people to use the arrow keys for now.
Back/Forward just seems to be somewhat broken in the current Zotero 7 beta.
There did seem to be some weird behaviour with my shortcuts still… I'll check if I can reproduce it across systems, after a reboot, etc., and let you know.