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 Keyboard bindings are shown like this: <kbd>s</kbd> or <kbd class="mod1">x</kbd>.
15 <kbd>Ctrl x</kbd> means "press the <kbd>Ctrl</kbd> key, keep it pressed and then also
16 press the <kbd>x</kbd> key. You may also see key combinations such as
17 <kbd class="mod12">e</kbd>, which mean that you should press the <kbd
18 class="mod1"> </kbd> key, then while keeping it pressed also press the
19 <kbd class="mod2"> </kbd> key and then while
20 keeping them both pressed, finally press the <kbd>e</kbd> key.</p>
22 Note that different platforms have different conventions for which modifier key
23 (Control or Command) to use as the primary or most common modifier. When viewing
24 this manual from a machine identifying itself as running OS X, you will see
25 <kbd>Cmd</kbd> where appropriate (for instance in the first example above).
26 On other machines you will see <kbd>Ctrl</kbd> instead.
31 Menu items are indicated like this:<br />
32 <kbd class="menu">Top > Next > Deeper</kbd>. Each ">"-separated item
33 indicates one level of a nested (sub-)menu.
36 <h3>Preference/Dialog Options</h3>
38 Choices in various dialogs, notably the Preferences and Properties dialog, are
39 indicated like this:<br />
40 <kbd class="option">Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some Option</kbd>.
41 Each successive item indicates either a (sub-) menu or a tabbed dialog
42 navigation. The final item is the one to choose or select.
45 If you are requested to deselect an option, you will see something like
47 <kbd class="optoff">Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some other
54 Important notes about things that might not otherwise be obvious are shown in this
60 Hairy issues that might cause things to go wrong, lose data, or impair sound
61 quality is displayed in this way.
65 <h3>Mouse Buttons</h3>
67 We refer to <a href="/setting-up-your-system/the-mouse">mouse buttons</a> as
68 <kbd class="mouse">Left</kbd>, <kbd class="mouse">Middle</kbd> and
69 <kbd class="mouse">Right</kbd>. Ardour can use additional buttons, but they have
70 no default behaviour in the program.
73 <h4>Mouse click modifiers</h4>
75 Many editing functions are performed by clicking the mouse while holding a
76 modifier key, for example <kbd class="mouse mod1">Left</kbd>.
79 <h4>"Context-click"</h4>
80 <p>Many times the term <kbd class="mouse">context-click</kbd> is used to indicate
81 that you should (typically) right-click on a particular element of the graphical
82 user interface. Although right-click is the common, default way to do this, there
83 are other ways to accomplish the same thing - this term refers to any of them,
84 and the result is always that a menu specific to the item you clicked on will be
88 <h3>"The Pointer"</h3>
90 When the manual refers to the "pointer", it means the on-screen representation
91 of the mouse position or the location of a touch action if you are using a touch
95 <h3>Other user input</h3>
97 Ardour supports hardware controllers, such as banks of <kbd
98 class="fader">faders</kbd>, <kbd class="knob">knobs</kbd>, or <kbd
99 class="button">buttons</kbd>.