Editing 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

Editing Shortcuts

The Shortcuts page edits ~/.cyanotype/keys.conf, the hotkeys that work anywhere in your session. The page has the action list on the left and an inspector on the right.

The Action List

Every action the window manager can be asked to perform is listed, grouped under a category heading. The categories are Window, Desktop, Tiling, Session and, when you have any, Launchers.

Each row shows the action in plain English on the left and its current chord on the right, so the list doubles as a printed reference for what is bound to what. An action with no chord shows a dash.

Category headings are not selectable. Select an action row, not a heading; the buttons on the right stay insensitive until you do, and the status line says "Select an action under a category."

For the full list of actions and their stock chords, see The Action Catalog.

The Inspector

Selecting an action fills in the panel on the right.

Current:         the chord bound to this action now
Technical id:    the stable name, e.g. window.maximize
Category:        Window, Desktop, Tiling, Session
Dispatch:        how the window manager carries it out

The Current chord is set in the largest type on the panel, because it is the thing you came to look at.

The technical id is what appears in keys.conf. It is stable: labels can be reworded, ids will not be. Use the id when you edit the file by hand or when you report a problem.

The Dispatch note is honest about the mechanism. Most of these actions are private window-manager verbs, not standard window-manager messages, and the note says which. A few do publish standard properties as a side effect, and those say so too.

Launcher Rows

A launcher is a shortcut that runs a shell command rather than a window manager verb. Its id begins with "exec." and the inspector shows the command it will run. Launchers cannot be added from this page yet; write them into keys.conf directly. See Where the Settings Live.

The Three Buttons

Set Shortcut...    capture a new chord
Clear              unbind it
Reset Default      restore its stock chord

And at the bottom left of the page:

Reset All Defaults    restore every stock chord

All four are covered in Setting a Shortcut.