praat

Adding Keyboard Shortcuts in PRAAT


I'm hoping to create a shortcut that allows the user to replay the last 10ms as well as a short cut that allows the user to play the subsequent 10ms of an audio file.

Do folks know any methods for incorporating shortcuts like this into PRAAT or any existing plugins?

Tips on good PRAAT message boards or listservs are also appreciated.


Solution

  • Praat has very bad support for shortcuts. As far as I know, the only platform-independent way in which you can specify what some keyboard shortcuts do is by using the logging scripts, and these only really work in the Sound and TextGrid editors.

    In a nutshell, you can write up to two scripts and link them to Alt + F12 or Ctrl + F12, and pressing those keys in the editors will execute the specified scripts (in editor mode!). The mechanic is designed for logging scripts, but since the shortcuts simply execute a script, and you can specify the contents, you can do anything you want with them.

    To link them, open an editor and go to Query -> Log settings...

    Write the path of your scripts in the "Log script 3" (which uses Alt + F12) and "Log script 4" (which uses Ctrl + F12).

    Of course, one of the limitations of using this approach is that you cannot specify the shortcuts (which is also a problem because there are sometimes conflicts that need to be resolved; in KDE, for example, Ctrl + F12 is used to show the desktop).

    As for Praat message boards, there are only two I know of: the Praat user's mailing list (which is for general use), and the issue tracker for the repository on Github (which is for ... bug tracking).