The Power Keys

Documentation / Contents - On-Screen Keyboard

• Overview of the On-Screen Keyboard
  • The Four Boards
  • One Keyboard Per Screen
• Bringing Up the Keyboard
  • The Show Key
  • The FindIt Gesture
  • The Taskbar Button and the Systray Icon
  • Putting It Away
• Typing With the Keyboard
  • Shift and Other Modifiers
  • Why Your Own Keyboard Still Works
  • Moving and Resizing the Board
• The Face Menu
• The Indicator Strip
• The Power Keys
• Word and Phrase Suggestions
• Layout, Size, and Placement
  • Keyboard Layout
  • Size
  • Where It Appears
• Setting Preferences
  • The Layout Page
  • The Appearance Page
  • The Behavior Page
  • The Session Page
  • The Typing Page
  • Defaults and Close
• Making the Keyboard Easier to Use
  • High-Contrast Colors
  • Hover to Press
  • A Bigger Board
• Keys and Shortcuts
• Where the Settings Live
• Copyright Information

The Power Keys

The Power Keys are a strip of five keys to the right of the typing board. They do not type. Each one asks the window manager to do something, which is why they carry words rather than characters.

<      >       Previous desk, next desk
max    min     Maximize, minimize the target window
Tile           Cycle to the next tiling mode

The two arrow keys carry "Desks" as their shift legend, so the strip reads as a pair of desk keys even at a glance.

Turning Them On

The strip is off until you ask for it. Turn on "Show Desktop PowerKeys" on the Appearance page of Setting Preferences.

Attaching or detaching the strip changes the width of the keyboard window, because the strip is measured as part of the board. Switching boards detaches the strip, re-measures the typing face, and re-attaches it.

What Each Key Does

• The arrows move you to the previous or next desk, wrapping at the ends, exactly as the desk keys on your keyboard do.
• max maximizes the target window, or restores it if it is already maximized. min minimizes it.
• Tile advances the window manager to its next tiling mode. Press it repeatedly to walk the modes.

The "target window" is the window that would receive your typing: the focused window, or the most recently used one if nothing is focused. It is never the keyboard itself.

These Are Not Keystrokes

A Power Key never injects a key. It sends the window manager a request directly. That has two consequences worth knowing:

• An application cannot intercept a Power Key the way it could intercept Alt+F10.
• If no Blueprint window manager is running, the Power Keys do nothing. They are a remote control for cywm, not a general mechanism.

The same verbs are available as ordinary keyboard shortcuts, and those you can rebind. See the Menu & Shortcuts book, under Desktop, Window and Tiling; reach it from Help Books in the Contents pane and pick MenuShortcuts. The window manager's own book, WindowManager, describes what tiling modes exist and what maximize means when a Desktop Exclusion Zone is reserved.