New Kerning Keyboard Commands
Friday, November 9, 2012 at 9:21AM 
In the Motion 5.0.5 update that came out recently, kerning no longer works the same way. In previous versions, you would hold the Control key down and tap the left or right arrow keys while editing text to change the spacing between two letters. Since that keyboard combination is now used by the OS, there's a new way: hold down the Command and Option keys, and then tap the left or right bracket keys.
Thanks to Anders Larsen for this additional information:
A Danish keyboard doesn't have [bracket]-keys.
So for the hordes of Danish Motion users out there who use kerning all the time, here is a work-around:
- System Preferences -> Languages & Text -> Input Sources
- Make sure U.S. Extended is checked
- Click the Keyboard Shortcuts button and select Keyboard & Text Input
- Assign a shortcut to "Select next source in input menu" (at the bottom of the list)
You can now toggle between DK and US keyboard layouts and use the bracket key shortcuts for kerning. The Bracket keys are "å" and "^" (between "p" and the return key)


Reader Comments (2)
Thanks for posting this Mark. It took me a while to find this last week when I noticed that kerning had "stopped working."
Perusing through the keyboard editor (Motion/Commands/Customize...) I see that the old commands are now labeled "System Reserved" as you mention. I'm not sure what that exactly means.
Photoshop really get's kerning and leading right with it's Option + cursor keys. I was hoping to remap the Motion keys in the command editor to match PS, but was sad to find that neither kerning or line spacing are available for mapping. Am I missing something here?
Tracy, "system reserved" means that the keyboard shortcut is being used by the OS. You can remap your keyboard shortcuts but you can't use ones that are in use by the OS.