When the cursor is in the main Chimera window, character keystrokes may be interpreted as accelerators, commands, or information intended for another dialog (although focus can be restored to the main window by mouseclick). An accelerator takes effect as soon as it is typed, whereas a command takes effect after return (Enter) is pressed. See the Accelerators manual page for more on character keystroke interpretation.
Several arrow key shortcuts adjust the Chimera selection contents.
Tab (and often Shift-Tab) can be used to navigate among user interface elements, including icons in the toolbar. Pressing the space bar is equivalent to clicking the highlighted element.
A top-level menu with an underlined character in its name can be opened by pressing the Alt key and the character. (Exception: this does not work on Mac OSX/X11, but the other shortcuts described below will work in menus that have been torn off.) Entries in the open menu with an underlined character can be chosen by pressing that character. For example, Alt-f opens the File menu, and subsequently, c invokes Close Session. The arrow keys can be used to navigate within the menus. Pressing the space bar is equivalent to a mouseclick (chooses the highlighted menu item or, if no item is highlighted, closes the menu).
The entire Chimera menu can also be popped up.
When the cursor is over a dialog: Tab (and often Shift-Tab) can be used to navigate among user interface elements, arrow keys can be used to navigate within lists and menus, and the space bar acts like a mouseclick. For example, when the cursor is over the Preferences Tool, the category can be changed by pressing Tab until the button next to Category is highlighted, pressing space bar to open the menu of categories, using the arrow keys to navigate to the desired category, and then pressing Enter (or the space bar, except on Windows) to choose the category. The Esc (escape) key can be used to close the menu of categories without choosing another category.
F1 invokes the help page for a dialog, if available. Most dialogs can be closed with the Esc key. Where possible, Esc is associated with the Cancel action. Some dialogs have a default action, indicated by highlighting of the corresponding button, that can be invoked by hitting return (Enter).
Chimera uses the Tk
default bindings.
Some shortcuts for editing text depend on the windowing system:
| X11 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Action | Key | Alternate |
| Cut | Ctrl-x | F20 |
| Copy | Ctrl-c | F16 |
| Paste | Ctrl-v | F18 |
| PasteSelection | Button 2 Release | |
| Undo (if implemented) | Ctrl-z | |
| Redo (if implemented) | Ctrl-Shift-Z | |
| win32 | ||
|---|---|---|
| Action | Key | Alternate |
| Cut | Ctrl-x | Shift-Delete |
| Copy | Ctrl-c | Ctrl-Insert |
| Paste | Ctrl-v | Shift-Insert |
| PasteSelection | Button 2 Release | |
| Undo (if implemented) | Ctrl-z | |
| Redo (if implemented) | Ctrl-y | |
| aqua | ||
|---|---|---|
| Action | Key | Alternate |
| Cut | Ctrl-x | F2 |
| Copy | Ctrl-c | F3 |
| Paste | Ctrl-v | F4 |
| PasteSelection | Button 2 Release | |
| Clear | Clear | |
| Undo (if implemented) | Ctrl-z | |
| Redo (if implemented) | Ctrl-y | |