Keyboard Shortcuts

Most of the keyboard shortcuts in NEdit are shown on the right hand sides of the pull-down menus. However, there are more which are not as obvious. These include; dialog button shortcuts; menu and dialog mnemonics; labeled keyboard keys, such as the arrows, page-up, page-down, and home; and optional Shift modifiers on accelerator keys, like Shift Ctrl+F.

 Menu Accelerators

Pressing the key combinations shown on the right of the menu items is a shortcut for selecting the menu item with the mouse. Some items have the shift key enclosed in brackets, such as [Shift]Ctrl+F. This indicates that the shift key is optional. In search commands, including the shift key reverses the direction of the search. In Shift commands, it makes the command shift the selected text by a whole tab stop rather than by single characters.

 Menu Mnemonics

Pressing the Alt key in combination with one of the underlined characters in the menu bar pulls down that menu. Once the menu is pulled down, typing the underlined characters in a menu item (without the Alt key) activates that item. With a menu pulled down, you can also use the arrow keys to select menu items, and the space or enter keys to activate them.

 Keyboard Shortcuts within Dialogs

One button in a dialog is usually marked with a thick indented outline. Pressing the Return or Enter key activates this button.

All dialogs have either a Cancel or Dismiss button. This button can be activated by pressing the Escape (or Esc) key.

Pressing the tab key moves the keyboard focus to the next item in a dialog. Within an associated group of buttons, the arrow keys move the focus among the buttons. Shift+Tab moves backward through the items.

Most items in dialogs have an underline under one character in their name. Pressing the Alt key along with this character, activates a button as if you had pressed it with the mouse, or moves the keyboard focus to the associated text field or list.

You can select items from a list by using the arrow keys to move the selection and space to select.

In file selection dialogs, you can type the beginning characters of the file name or directory in the list to select files

 Labeled Function Keys

The labeled function keys on standard workstation and PC keyboards, like the arrows, and page-up and page-down, are active in NEdit, though not shown in the pull-down menus.

Holding down the control key while pressing a named key extends the scope of the action that it performs. For example, Home normally moves the insert cursor the beginning of a line. Ctrl+Home moves it to the beginning of the file. Backspace deletes one character, Ctrl+Backspace deletes one word.

Holding down the shift key while pressing a named key begins or extends a selection. Combining the shift and control keys combines their actions. For example, to select a word without using the mouse, position the cursor at the beginning of the word and press Ctrl+Shift+RightArrow. The Alt key modifies selection commands to make the selection rectangular.

Under X and Motif, there are several levels of translation between keyboard keys and the actions they perform in a program. The "Key Binding", and "X Resources" sections below have more information on this subject. Because of all of this configurability, and since keyboards and standards for the meaning of some keys vary from machine to machine, the mappings may be changed from the defaults listed below.

 Modifier Keys (in general)

• Ctrl Extends the scope of the action that the key would otherwise perform. For example, Home normally moves the insert cursor the beginning of a line. Ctrl+Home moves it to the beginning of the file. Backspace deletes one character, Ctrl+ Backspace deletes one word.
• Shift Extends the selection to the cursor position. If there's no selection, begins one between the old and new cursor positions.
• Alt When modifying a selection, makes the selection rectangular.

(For the effects of modifier keys on mouse button presses, see the section titled "Using the Mouse")

 All Keyboards

• Escape Cancels operation in progress: menu selection, drag, selection, etc. Also equivalent to cancel button in dialogs.
• Backspace Delete the character before the cursor
• Ctrl+BS Delete the word before the cursor
• Arrows
• Left Move the cursor to the left one character
• Ctrl+Left Move the cursor backward one word (Word delimiters are settable, see Customization)
• Right Move the cursor to the right one character
• Ctrl+Right Move the cursor forward one word
• Up Move the cursor up one line
• Ctrl+Up Move the cursor up one paragraph. (Paragraphs are delimited by blank lines.)
• Down Move the cursor down one line.
• Ctrl+Down Move the cursor down one paragraph.
• Ctrl+Return Return with automatic indent, regardless of the setting of Auto Indent.
• Shift+Return Return without automatic indent, regardless of the setting of Auto Indent.
• Ctrl+Tab Insert an ascii tab character, without processing emulated tabs.
• Alt+Ctrl+<c> Insert the control-code equivalent of a key <c>
• Ctrl+/ Select everything (same as Select All menu item or ^A)
• Ctrl+\ Unselect
• Ctrl+U Delete to start of line

 PC Standard Keyboard

• Ctrl+Insert Copy the primary selection to the clipboard (same as Copy menu item or ^C) for compatibility with Motif standard key binding
• Shift+Ctrl+ Insert Copy the primary selection to the cursor location.
• Delete Delete the character before the cursor. (Can be configured to delete the character after the cursor, see Customization, and X Resources)
• Ctrl+Delete Delete to end of line
• Shift+Delete Cut, remove the currently selected text and place it in the clipboard. (same as Cut menu item or ^X) for compatibility with Motif standard key binding.
• Shift+Ctrl+ Delete Cut the primary selection to the cursor location.
• Home Move the cursor to the beginning of the line.
• Ctrl+Home Move the cursor to the beginning of the file.
• End Move the cursor to the end of the line.
• Ctrl+End Move the cursor to the end of the file.
• PageUp Scroll and move the cursor up by one page.
• Ctrl+PageUp Scroll and move the cursor left by one page.
• PageDown Scroll and move the cursor down by one page.
• Ctrl+PageDown Scroll and move the cursor right by one page
• F10 Make the menu bar active for keyboard input (Arrow Keys, Return, Escape, and the Space Bar)

  Specialty Keyboards

On machines with different styles of keyboards, generally, text editing actions are properly matched to the labeled keys, such as Remove, Next-screen, etc.. If you prefer different key bindings, see Key Binding section.