Next: Menu Selection and Accelerators
Up: Menus and Operations
Previous: Coordinates Display
Contents
Index
Keypress Buffer
Below the buttons in the side menu is the key press buffer area. This
area displays the last five keys in the keypress buffer. The keypress
buffer remembers up to 16 characters, though only the last five are
shown. It is cleared when Esc or Ctrl-U is typed. If the
key sequence in the buffer uniquely prefixes a menu command, the
command name is displayed, and the command is executed. The command
names are a short mnemonic, displayed in the ``tooltip'' that appears
when the pointer rests over a command or menu button. In Windows,
menu items do not have tooltips, instead, the tooltip text is
displayed in the status line.
Most commands have at most five characters in their command name, the
exceptions are the scripts in the User Menu. For these, the
menu text is the same as the command name, and it may take more than
five characters to uniquely define the command.
The keypress buffer can be forced to literally match menu items by
typing Enter. Consider the two entries in the User Menu:
spiral and spiralform. Typing ``spiral'' does nothing,
as this is a prefix of both entries. In order to run spiral by typing
the command prefix, type ``spiral'' then Enter. This works for
any menu commands where one entire command is a prefix of another.
While Xic is awaiting input in the prompt line, the word ``INPUT''
is shown in colored text in this window, and the prompt line
background switches to a lighter color.
Next: Menu Selection and Accelerators
Up: Menus and Operations
Previous: Coordinates Display
Contents
Index
Stephen R. Whiteley
2006-10-23