Hints & Shortcuts

Documentation / Blueprint Desktop Help

• Overview of the Blueprint Desktop
• Getting Help
  • Click for Help
  • Using the Help Viewer
• Keys and Shortcuts
• Hints & Shortcuts
  • Getting Around the Desktop
  • Windows Without the Title Bar
  • Desks
  • Tiling
  • When a Menu Entry Is Greyed
• The Settings Books
• Legal Notice
  • License
  • Trademarks
  • Third-Party Components

Other cards

• Copyright Information

Hints & Shortcuts

Short answers to the things people ask first, and the chords that go with them. This is the desktop's card. The keys the Help Viewer itself binds are a separate list; see Keys and Shortcuts.

Every chord here is a stock default. All of them can be rebound, and the place to do that is the Menu & Shortcuts panel, on the Toolchest under Desktop > Customize > Menu and Shortcuts. It writes ~/.cyanotype/keys.conf.

Getting Around the Desktop

Alt+Tab           Move to the window you used last
Alt+Shift+Tab     Walk back the other way
Alt+r             Post the desktop menu at the pointer
Ctrl+Alt+k        Show or hide the on-screen keyboard

Alt+Tab walks windows in the order you last used them, not the order they sit in. Pressing it once and letting go returns you to the window you just came from, which is the common case and is why the order is what it is.

Alt+r is the keyboard equivalent of pressing the third mouse button on the desktop background.

Windows Without the Title Bar

You do not have to aim at the frame to move a window.

Alt + drag, button 1      Move the window
Alt + drag, button 3      Resize the window

Both work anywhere on the window, including the middle of the application's own canvas. This is the old SGI and mwm gesture, and it is the answer when a window has been dragged so far up that its title bar is off the screen.

The same two commands have keyboard chords, for starting the gesture without finding the window first:

Alt+F7    Move window
Alt+F8    Resize window

Both still finish with the mouse. Each starts an interactive drag in which the pointer takes over, and you place the window and click. There is no arrow-key placement today.

The rest of the window commands, in the order they appear on the window menu:

Alt+space   Window menu
Alt+F5      Restore
Alt+F9      Minimize
Alt+F10     Maximize, or restore if already maximized
Alt+F1      Raise
Alt+F3      Lower
Alt+F4      Close
Alt+F12     Exit the application

There are two quick spellings for the two you reach for most:

Alt+n    Minimize
Alt+m    Maximize or restore

Close and Exit are not the same thing. Close asks the window to go away and lets the application object, save a file, or put up a dialog. Exit ends the program that owns the window whether it likes it or not. Reach for Close first.

If an application draws its own title bar and refuses the window manager's, Ctrl+Alt+d forces a real frame onto it. That is the escape hatch, not the normal path.

Desks

Ctrl+Alt+Right    Next desk
Ctrl+Alt+Left     Previous desk
Ctrl+Alt+s        Make this window sticky

Next and previous wrap around at the ends. A sticky window shows on every desk, which is what you want for a clock or a monitor and almost nothing else.

Ten chords go straight to a numbered desk, and ten more send the window you are in to one:

Super+1 to Super+0             Go to desk 1 through 10
Alt+1 to Alt+0                 The same ten, second set
Super+Shift+1 to Super+Shift+0 Send this window there

Both sets of go-to chords ship bound, so whichever your hands already know will work. Unbind the set you do not use if it collides with an application.

Tiling

Ctrl+Alt+t             Cycle to the next tiling mode
Ctrl+Alt+f             Back to ordinary floating windows
Alt+bracketleft        Shrink the master pane
Alt+bracketright       Grow the master pane

The master pane is the large one a tiling layout gives to the window you are working in. The two bracket chords move the split a step at a time, so you can hand it more or less of the screen without reaching for the mouse.

They are spelled bracketleft and bracketright because those are the X names for those keys, and that is what the shortcut editor writes into the file.

Ctrl+Alt+f is the way out. If a tiling mode has arranged your screen in a way you did not want, it puts everything back to floating in one chord.

When a Menu Entry Is Greyed

A Toolchest entry whose program is not installed is greyed out rather than removed, so the shape of the menu keeps telling the truth about what this machine has. Selecting a greyed entry does nothing, on purpose.

That is why some rows on the Help menu itself are grey: the programs behind them are not part of Blueprint yet, and a row that lit up and did nothing would be worse than one that plainly cannot be picked.

Getting Help Anywhere

Shift+F1    Click for Help, in any application

Press it, then click the control you are wondering about, and the help for that control comes up. See Click for Help.

The Help Viewer you are reading this in can be pointed at any book on the machine: Help Books in the Contents pane lists them all. The Toolchest's Help > Online Books opens straight onto that list.

The Full Shortcut Table

This card carries the shortcuts worth memorizing. The complete table, every action with its technical id and its stock chord, is in the Menu & Shortcuts book, under The Action Catalog. Reach that book from Help Books in the Contents pane.

See also Getting Help and The Settings Books.