Keyboard shortcuts

This page will try to present an overview of the ways to interact with Outspline through the keyboard.

Main menu and global shortcuts

The main menu can always be opened with F10; if it is not set to autohide, its root entries can also be accessed with Alt plus the respective underlined letter. Once opened, it can be navigated with the arrow keys, and the various underlined letters can be used to quickly activate the respective entries.

Many actions of the main menu are associated to shortcuts that can be accessed without the need to open the menu: the key combinations are shown next to the various menu entries, and by default they are all executed with Ctrl plus optionally Shift and another key. Table of keyboard shortcuts presents a summary of the default combinations, and the respective entries in the configuration file, for customization.

Note that when the text area of an item's editor is focused, all the pending changes can be applied with Ctrl+Enter, regardless of whether the corresponding main menu item has been customized or not. In the same fashion, Ctrl+Shift+Enter can be used to apply the pending changes of all the open editors.

Tab and arrow-key navigation

In order to navigate through the various elements of the interface, Tab and Shift+Tab can be used; if a control that uses Tab for other purposes has currently focus, Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab will do the same job.

Additionally, if the focused control does not use the arrow keys, these can be used to navigate through the elements in the interface in a more 2-dimensional fashion.

Finally, in order to navigate out of the text area in an item's editor, you can also press Esc.

Buttons and other controls

The buttons and the other non-menu controls that are found in the interface can often be activated by pressing Alt plus the underlined letter in the respective label.

Some controls respond natively to particular key presses, most often Enter or the arrow keys, also in combination with Ctrl or Shift.

The collapsible plugin bars in item editors can be expanded or collapsed with Enter or Space, once they are focused.

Contextual shortcuts

Many actions can also be executed through special shortcuts that are available depending on what element of the interface has focus. Sometimes these shortcuts offer easier alternatives to global shortcuts, some other times they are used to quickly navigate to particular areas of the interface.

Note that contextual shortcuts are disabled by default: see Configuration:-Tips#contextual-keyboard-shortcuts to enable them, and Table of keyboard shortcuts for a summary of their default values and the respective entries in the configuration file, for customization.

Note that there is a group of contextual shortcuts which deserve a special mention, since they are actually available throughout the whole interface and are used to ease the navigation with the keyboard:

• , sets focus to the database tree in the left notebook.
• . sets focus to the tab currently open in the right notebook, if any.
• ' sets focus to the logs area in the left notebook.
• k, j, h and l are used to mirror the arrow keys in the Vim way, respectively Up, Down, Left and Right.