The Action Catalog

Documentation / Contents - Menu & Shortcuts

• Overview of Menu & Shortcuts
  • Two Pages, Two Files
  • Who Is In Charge
• Editing the Desktop Menu
  • Reading the Tree
  • Changing a Label or a Command
  • Adding Items, Submenus and Separators
  • Deleting and Reordering
  • Reload File
• Editing Shortcuts
  • The Action List
  • The Inspector
• Setting a Shortcut
  • Arming the Capture
  • When a Chord Is Already Taken
  • Clear and Reset Default
  • Reset All Defaults
• The Action Catalog
  • Window
  • Desktop
  • Tiling
  • Session
  • Launchers
• Where the Settings Live
  • The Shortcuts File
  • The Menu File
  • The Legacy Keys File
• The Status Line
• Keys and Shortcuts in the Editor
• Copyright Information

The Action Catalog

Every action the Shortcuts page can bind, with its technical id and the chord it ships with. These are the stock defaults; Reset All Defaults on the Shortcuts page restores exactly this table.

Window

These act on the focused window, or on the most recently used one when nothing is focused.

window.raise           Raise window                Alt+F1
window.lower           Lower window                Alt+F3
window.close           Close window                Alt+F4
window.restore         Restore window              Alt+F5
window.move            Move window                 Alt+F7
window.resize          Resize window               Alt+F8
window.minimize        Minimize window             Alt+F9
window.maximize        Maximize / restore window   Alt+F10
window.exit            Exit application            Alt+F12
window.menu            Window menu                 Alt+space
window.minimize_quick  Minimize window (quick)     Alt+n
window.maximize_quick  Maximize / restore (quick)  Alt+m
window.force_decorate  Force-decorate window       Ctrl+Alt+d

Move and Resize start an interactive drag; the pointer takes over and you place the window with the mouse. Exit application is not the same as Close window: Close asks the window to go away politely, Exit ends the program that owns it.

Force-decorate puts a window manager frame on a window that drew its own title bar and refused one. It is the escape hatch for an application that insists on decorating itself.

The window manager's own book, WindowManager, describes what each of these does to a window. Reach it from Help Books in the Contents pane .

Desktop

desk.next      Next desktop            Ctrl+Alt+Right
desk.prev      Previous desktop        Ctrl+Alt+Left
desk.sticky    Toggle sticky window    Ctrl+Alt+s

Next and previous wrap at the ends. A sticky window shows on every desk.

Ten numbered actions, "Go to desktop N", go straight to a desk. Ten more, "Go to desktop N (Alt)", do the same thing on a second set of chords, so you can have both:

desk.goto.1 to desk.goto.10            Super+1 to Super+0
desk.goto_alt.1 to desk.goto_alt.10    Alt+1 to Alt+0

And ten, "Send window to desktop N", send the current window to a desk:

desk.send.1 to desk.send.10    Super+Shift+1 to Super+Shift+0

The Desks Overview shows the same desks as a map you can click and drag windows across. See the Desks book.

Tiling

tile.cycle          Cycle tiling mode    Ctrl+Alt+t
exec.xterm          Unix shell (xterm)   Ctrl+Alt+x
exec.cystar         CyStar editor        Ctrl+Alt+s
(unbound)           reserved for apps    Ctrl+t
tile.float          Floating mode        Ctrl+Alt+f
tile.master_shrink  Shrink master ratio  Alt+bracketleft
tile.master_grow    Grow master ratio    Alt+bracketright

Cycle walks the tiling modes in order; Floating mode goes straight back to ordinary overlapping windows. The master ratio is how much of the screen the master pane takes, and the two nudge keys move it a step at a time.

The two master-ratio chords are the square bracket keys. They are spelled bracketleft and bracketright because that is the X name for those keys, and it is what the editor writes into keys.conf.

The Power Keys strip on the on-screen keyboard has a Tile key that does the same thing as tile.cycle; see the Keyboard book.

Session

session.cycle_windows       Cycle windows (MRU)     Alt+Tab
session.cycle_windows_back  Cycle windows backward  Alt+Shift+Tab
session.root_menu           Desktop menu navigator  Alt+r
session.osk                 On-screen keyboard      Ctrl+Alt+k

Cycle windows walks the windows in the order you last used them, so pressing it once returns you to the window you came from.

Desktop menu navigator posts the menu you edit on the Desktop Menu page, at the pointer. It is the keyboard equivalent of pressing the third mouse button on the desktop. See Editing the Desktop Menu.

On-screen keyboard shows or hides the on-screen keyboard. See the Keyboard book for what it does once it is up.

Launchers

A launcher runs a shell command. Its id begins with "exec." and it carries the command after the chord:

exec.xterm    Ctrl+Alt+x    xterm -ls
exec.cystar   Ctrl+Alt+s    cystar

Launchers are written into keys.conf by hand; the Shortcuts page shows them and lets you rebind them, but it cannot add or remove them yet. Shortcuts found in the older ~/.cyanotype/keys file are shown as exec.legacy.1, exec.legacy.2 and so on. See Where the Settings Live.

A Note on Names

The Dispatch line in the inspector names the window manager's own verb, such as wm_maximize_toggle or switch_desktop. Most of these are private to Blueprint's window manager and are not standard desktop messages. That is stated plainly rather than dressed up in standard-looking names that would not work anywhere else.