3 title: About Ardour documentation
6 <h2>Conventions Used In This Manual</h2>
8 This section covers some of the typographical and language conventions
12 <h3>Keyboards and Modifiers</h3>
14 <dfn>Keyboard bindings</dfn> are shown like this: <kbd>s</kbd> or
15 <kbd class="mod1">x</kbd>.
18 <kbd>Ctrl x</kbd> means "press the <kbd>Ctrl</kbd> key, keep it pressed
19 and then also press the <kbd>x</kbd> key. You may also see key combinations
20 such as <kbd class="mod12">e</kbd>, which mean that you should hold down
21 the <kbd class="mod1"> </kbd> key <em>and</em> the
22 <kbd class="mod2"> </kbd> key, and then while keeping them both
23 down, press the <kbd>e</kbd> key.
26 Note that different platforms have different conventions for which
27 modifier key (Control or Command) to use as the primary or most common
28 modifier. When viewing this manual from a machine identifying itself as
29 running OS X, you will see <kbd>Cmd</kbd> where appropriate (for instance
30 in the first example above). On other machines you will see <kbd>Ctrl</kbd>
36 Menu items are indicated like this:<br />
37 <kbd class="menu">Top > Next > Deeper</kbd>.<br />
38 Each ">"-separated item indicates one level of a nested (sub-)menu.
41 <h3>Preference/Dialog Options</h3>
43 Choices in various dialogs, notably the Preferences and Properties dialog, are
44 indicated like this:<br />
45 <kbd class="option">Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some
47 Each successive item indicates either a (sub-) menu or a tabbed dialog
48 navigation. The final item is the one to choose or select.
51 If you are requested to deselect an option, you will see something like
53 <kbd class="optoff">Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some other
60 Important notes about things that might not otherwise be obvious are shown in
66 Hairy issues that might cause things to go wrong, lose data, or impair sound
67 quality is displayed in this way.
71 <h3>Mouse Buttons</h3>
73 We refer to <a href="/setting-up-your-system/the-mouse">mouse buttons</a> as
74 <kbd class="mouse">Left</kbd>, <kbd class="mouse">Middle</kbd> and
75 <kbd class="mouse">Right</kbd>. Ardour can use additional buttons, but they have
76 no default behaviour in the program.
79 <h4>Mouse click modifiers</h4>
81 Many editing functions are performed by clicking the mouse while holding a
82 modifier key, for example <kbd class="mouse mod1">Left</kbd>.
85 <h4>"Context-click"</h4>
87 Many times the term <kbd class="mouse">context-click</kbd> is used to indicate
88 that you should (typically) right-click on a particular element of the graphical
89 user interface. Although right-click is the common, default way to do this, there
90 are other ways to accomplish the same thing - this term refers to any of them,
91 and the result is always that a menu specific to the item you clicked on will be
95 <h3>"The Pointer"</h3>
97 When the manual refers to the "pointer", it means the on-screen representation
98 of the mouse position or the location of a touch action if you are using a touch
102 <h3>Other user input</h3>
104 Ardour supports hardware controllers, such as banks of
105 <kbd class="fader">faders</kbd>, <kbd class="knob">knobs</kbd>, or
106 <kbd class="button">buttons</kbd>.