Alfa

Using the keyboard

Many operations can be performed much quicker with the keyboard than with the mouse. The problem is that you have to know what keys to press. Alfa display keyboard shortcuts for some of the available commands in the menus, but there are more keys with special functions. Here is a summary.

Keys in the main editing windows

Space, Return: selects the next (or the first) place holder. With Shift it selects the previous (or the last) place holder.
Up: selects the parent of the currently selected node in the syntax tree.
Down: selects the first (leftmost) child of the currently selected node.
Left/Right: selects the smallest selectable unit to the left/right of the current node.
Meta-Left/Right: selects the left/right sibling of the current node, e.g., the next item in a sequence.
Page Up/Page Down: scrolls one page up or down. With shift, scrolls one page left or right.
Backspace, Delete: Deletes the selected item, if possible. Sometimes this causes a type error.

Keys in text entry fields

The cursor can be moved with the arrow keys.
Control keys work to some extent as in Emacs. (C-f, C-b, C-e, C-a, ...)
Use shifted arrow keys to mark text.
Copy/Paste in single-line entry fields: Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Y (or the middle mouse button)
Copy/Paste in text editor: you have to use the popup menu provided by the right mouse button (sorry).
In some fields, the Tab gives compiletion (e.g., file name completion in the file selection window).

Keys in popup windows with OK/Cancel buttons

Return is the same as pressing the OK button, except in popup windows with a text editor, where you have to use Meta-Return instead.
Esc is the same as pressing the Cancel button.
If there are more than one text entry field, like in the layout editor, F1 (Tab in older versions of Alfa) activates the next one.

Keys in the file selection window

The buttons have keyboard shortcuts (which aren't indicated, sorry).

Meta-R selects the Root directory.
Meta-P selects the Parent directory.
Meta-H selects the Home directory.
Meta-L selects the Library directory.
Meta-C selects the Current directory (if the Cwd button is present).

Up/Down select the previous/next file name.
Page Up/Page Down scrolls the file list one page up or down.
Tab (Space in older versions of Alfa) does file name completion (when the cursor is at the end).