Is there a way around using [[ and ]] for Part in Mathematica?

Question

Is there a way to avoid having to do ⋮[[⋮ to obtain those great looking brackets for Part?

Answer 1

I have the following addition in /Applications/Mathematica.app/SystemFiles/FrontEnd/TextResources/Macintosh/KeyEventTranslations.tr which lets me enter double brackets with key combinations. You can do the same by modifying the file (where ever it is on your OS). I first learnt of this from Szabolcs's website here. He has other mathematica related stuff there that might be of help to you.

The commands added are:

• 〚 with Ctrl+[
• 〛 with Ctrl+]
• 〚〛 with Ctrl+Alt+]

Equivalents, as listed in the KeyEventTranslations.tr file are:

Modifiers can be "Shift", "Control", "Command", "Option"

For Macintosh: "Command" = Command Key, "Option" = Option Key

For X11: "Command" = Mod1, "Option" = Mod2

For Windows: "Command" = Alt, "Option" = Alt

Insert the following after EventTranslations[{ in the above file.

(* Custom keyboard shortcuts *)
    Item[KeyEvent["[", Modifiers -> {Control}],
        FrontEndExecute[{
            FrontEnd`NotebookWrite[FrontEnd`InputNotebook[],
                "\[LeftDoubleBracket]", After]
        }]],
    Item[KeyEvent["]", Modifiers -> {Control}],
        FrontEndExecute[{
            FrontEnd`NotebookWrite[FrontEnd`InputNotebook[],
                "\[RightDoubleBracket]", After]
        }]], 
    Item[KeyEvent["]", Modifiers -> {Control, Command}],
        FrontEndExecute[{
            FrontEnd`NotebookWrite[FrontEnd`InputNotebook[],
                "\[LeftDoubleBracket]", After],
            FrontEnd`NotebookWrite[FrontEnd`InputNotebook[],
                "\[RightDoubleBracket]", Before]
        }]], 

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You're not the only one who's peeved by it. Here's my attempt to avoid having to stretch to hit Esc by mapping Caps lock to Esc. Mr. Wizard also had a couple of questions related to conversion of [[ to 〚.