The Settings Books

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

The Settings Books

Blueprint has no single control panel. Each setting belongs to the program that owns it, and each program that ships a help corpus has its own book. This page is the hub: every book under share/cyhelp with a book.toc is named here. The coverage table for authors is share/cyhelp/INDEX.md.

Open one from Help Books at the top of the Contents pane, or:

cyhelp --book Fonts --topic overview

The www Applications page lists 51 product cards. Tiling Features is a CyWM capability (see WindowManager), not a separate book. Everything else maps to a book below.

The Panels

Fonts          the typefaces the whole desktop wears; cyfont-prefs
Schemes        the colours the whole desktop wears; cyschemed and
                cyscheme-edit (picker UI also in Background / cywall)
Background     wallpaper and the scheme picker UI; cywall
Sounds         whether the desktop makes noises, and which; cysoundd-prefs
Audio          the sound card: devices, levels, meters; cymix
Mouse          pointer speed, button mapping, trail and cursor; cymouse
Localization   locale, currency, timezone, and shell exports; cylocalize
CySaver        screen saver hack, idle timing, lock; cysaver
CySetup        Desktop Setup and Checkup panel; cysetup
CyMonitor      display DPI, layout, readability; cymonitor-prefs

Shell and Windows

Toolchest       the menu strip that launches everything; cychest
WindowManager   window frames, focus, tiling; cywm (tiling lives here)
Desks           the virtual desktops and their overview; cydesks
DockArea        edge dock; cydock
MenuShortcuts   keyboard shortcuts and menu capture; cykeys
Keyboard        the on-screen keyboard; cyosk
CySplash        startup splash, end-session panel, global help overlay
CyLogout        deprecated shim; prefer CySplash --end-session-panel
CyPower         Toolchest Restart / Shut Down under a scoped doas/sudo grant
CyOSD           on-screen banners and progress meters

Files and Media

FileManager     directories as icon views; cyfiler
FileHandlers    open-with rules; cyopen and cyopen-prefs
Media           removable media: cymount daemon and CyDrive; USB, discs
CyCopy          copy/move progress worker CyFiler starts for big jobs
CySelect        path picker other programs exec for file/dir choosers
CyPix           colour/pixel worker: wallpaper paint, grab, thumbs, schemes

Network and Status

CyNetwork       network panel; host wpa/dhcp files; stands down for NM
CyTinyMon       tray LAN/WAN link lamps + cytinymon-prefs

Apps and Console

CyLogin         graphical login and display manager (cylogind + greeter)
CyThrough       published remote X11 apps as native windows
Cyclock         desk clock and cyclock-prefs
CyStar          desktop text editor (cystar)
CyCalc          calculator: Basic algebraic, Finance/Science RPN
CySpeak         reading assistant / classic TTS
Blueprint       this help system and the desktop as a whole (default book)

Screen Hacks (picked from CySaver)

Icosahedra      GL icosahedron saver (SGI Octahedra-style modes)
Icosmoke        colored smoke hack
XrayAgent       classic xswarm-style hack

Which Book Do I Want

Some settings are easy to look for in the wrong place.

• Fonts are NOT in Localization and NOT per application. They are one desktop-wide setting, in Fonts.
• Focus policy is NOT in Mouse. It belongs to the window manager.
• Tiling layouts are WindowManager, not a separate Applications product.
• Wallpaper is Background (cywall); frame colours are Schemes.
• Plugging a USB stick or ejecting a disc is Media (cymount / CyDrive).
• Running a remote Firefox or Maya window on this desk is CyThrough.
• Claiming the console seat, PAM, or displacing LightDM/xdm is CyLogin.
• Screen blanking and the lock after idle are CySaver; the hack binaries are Icosahedra / Icosmoke / XrayAgent.
• End session UI is CySplash; CyLogout only forwards.
• Restart / Shut Down menu rows are CyPower (grey until a grant exists).
• Display DPI and multi-head layout are CyMonitor, not Fonts alone.
• Desktop sound volume and the sound card's volume are Sounds vs Audio.

Two Rules That Hold Everywhere

• Only one copy of a preferences panel runs per display screen. Launching a panel that is already open replaces it; the older one exits at once.
• Most panels apply changes live and have no Apply button. Where an Apply button exists, its book says what it covers.

Next

• Getting Help
• Keys and Shortcuts
• Help Books in the Contents pane lists every book.toc on disk