Overview of Menu & Shortcuts

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

Menu & Shortcuts

Menu & Shortcuts is the editor for the two things you reach without opening an application: the menu that appears when you press the third mouse button on the desktop, and the keyboard shortcuts that work anywhere in your session. Blueprint's program for this is called cykeys.

Two Pages, Two Files

The window has two pages, and each one edits exactly one file.

Desktop Menu  ~/.cyanotype/menu       the desktop root menu
Shortcuts     ~/.cyanotype/keys.conf  the session hotkeys

Nothing else is edited here. Accelerators inside an application, such as Ctrl+P for Print in the help viewer, belong to that application and are not in this list.

In This Book

• Editing the Desktop Menu
• Editing Shortcuts
• Setting a Shortcut
• The Action Catalog
• Where the Settings Live
• The Status Line
• Keys and Shortcuts in the Editor

Who Is In Charge

The window manager is the only program that installs session shortcuts and the only program that posts the desktop menu. Menu & Shortcuts does not watch your keyboard and does not put up menus. It writes the two files and then tells the window manager to re-read them, which it does without restarting and without disturbing any window you have open.

That has a practical consequence: every change you make here takes effect immediately, and it takes effect even for windows that are already up. It also means that if no Blueprint window manager is running, your edits are still saved; they simply have nothing to act on yet. The status line says so when that happens.

The on-screen keyboard can type into applications, but it never claims a session shortcut. Only the window manager does.

There Is No Apply Button

Every change writes the file at once.

• On the Shortcuts page: a successful capture, a Clear, or a Reset writes keys.conf and asks the window manager to reload.
• On the Desktop Menu page: Add, Delete, Up and Down write the file at once. An edit to the Label or Command field is committed when you press Enter or when you move the focus out of the field.

Close dismisses the panel; a pending field edit is committed first. Destructive actions, Delete and Reset All Defaults, ask first.