You Can Never Have Too Many RSE Shortcuts

As part of our preparations for the upcoming RPG & DB2 Summit in Minneapolis we've just released the latest edition of our "Favorite Keyboard Shortcuts for RSE" card. All you RSE/RDi users out there, feel free to download and print it. Alternatively there's an email link on the page where you can ask for hard copies of the shortcut card, which are a bit more durable and easier to pin up next to your workstation.

If you already have an earlier version of the card, you won't notice a dramatic difference, but we have made several improvements. For example, this one has a new section for the debugger shortcut keys, which were missing from the earlier versions of the card. Plus a few editor shortcuts have been added  for commenting or uncommenting statements in RPG and switching between sides of a single-member split view, among others.

It was a bit of challenge finding space for the new stuff we wanted to add as the list has grown quite a bit from our original version (this is about the 4th edition). We toyed with the idea of making the fonts smaller, but decided that if we did that, our old eyes probably wouldn't be able to read them any more. We're sure the younger RSE users out there wouldn't have any trouble, but we would like to be able to use the card too! Instead, we gained some space by condensing a few of the items in the "Windows Shortcuts" section, taking multiple lines down to a single line. We figure that many RPGers are now more comfortable with Windows applications than when we first created this card and so don't need quite as much help with those.

There's also a new "tip" on the back--a very brief tutorial on getting started with Service Entry Point (aka SEP) debugging for those who may still be struggling with making the integrated debugger work.

Of course, no sooner had the email about the new card gone out to the folks on our System i Developer mailing list than an email came in suggesting that we missed a good shortcut--Ctrl-Shift-D for filtering a source member by change date! Thanks for that tip, Irene. We agree it is a good candidate to add to the list. If only we had thought to ask folks for suggestions _before_ we printed 1,000 copies of the card <sigh>.

Then again, it's never too early to start planning for the next version! So everyone else--please send in your own ideas of shortcuts that we missed. It will probably be a while before we reprint the cards again (unless it becomes so popular that the 1,000 copies we have get used up quickly!)

In the meantime, if we get lots of good suggestions, we'll start an addendum to the card online in the form of an extra item on our "RSE Tips" page.

So please tell us about your own favorite shortcut keys in the comments section. We're sure there are some great ones that we simply haven't bumped into yet and you can never have too many shortcuts!

Comments

[Mary]

along with the Alt+R, ALt+L I use Alt+F7 and Alt+F8 to shift left/right

Ctrl+Del - delete the rest of the line to the right

Ctrl + L goto line#

with Ctrl+Shift+O Ctrl+F5 to remove nesting

[Barry Colson]

Jon & Susan: I have looked all over the page you mention in the blog for the e-mail link to request the tips card. Where is it? I'd like a card.

[Jon Paris]

@Barry - It may be time to update your browser! The link is in the text "... If you would like hard copies for your team, email us us your name, ..." - the word "email" is a hyper link to mailto:[email protected] (actually it is a Javascript link but the effect is the same.

SO just send your email to: [email protected] and all will be well.

[German]

Barry,

This is the URL to download page:

http://www.systemideveloper.com/downloads.html