Keyboard Shortcuts in Menus

[Graham Samuel]

I'm using LC 7.0.1. Looking at both the LC User Guide and the Dictionary, I find that I don’t exactly understand the way you put keyboard shortcuts into menus and get them to activate, especially on Windows. I note for example:

1. The ‘&’ character is always present in a menu item which is also intended to work as a keyboard shortcut, but it isn’t always at the beginning of the menu’s text. Is there are reason for this, or is it just wilful eccentricity on the part of the Menu Builder?

2. In a cross platform app, I use a script at startup to switch the last item of my 'File' menu from the Mac’s ‘Quit’ text

  &Quit/Q

to the Windows equivalent

 &Exit/x

This looks OK on the menu item display, but I don't think this works, even though the standard shortcuts (Cut, Copy, Paste) work in the 'Edit' menu, and they don't look any different in form. Naturally I may just have made a silly mistake, but so far I can't see what it is.

Can anyone explain what is going on behind the scenes?

BTW, I don't especially care for the Menu Builder, but it seems that the LC documentation assumes one is going to use it - maybe that's why the documentation is a bit sketchy.

TIA

Graham