This section covers some of the typographical and language conventions used in this manual.
Keyboard bindings are shown like this: s or x. Ctrl-x means "press the Ctrl, keep it pressed and then also press the x key. You may also see key combinations such as Ctrl-Shift-e, which mean that you should press the Ctrl key, then while keeping it pressed also press the Shift key and then while keeping them both pressed, finally press the e key.
Note that different platforms have different conventions for which modifier key (Control or Command) to use as the primary or most common modifier. When viewing this manual from a machine identifying itself as running OS X, will see Cmd- where appropriate. On other machines you will see Ctrl-
Menu items are indicated like this: Top > Next > Deeper Each >-separated item indicates an item on a nested (sub) menu.
Choices in various dialogs, notably the Preferences and Properties dialog, are indicated like this: Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some Option Each successive >-separated item indicates either a (sub) menu or tabbed dialog navigation. The final item is the one to choose/select/deselect, etc.
Important notes about things that might not otherwise be obvious are shown in this format
Many times the term context-click is used to indicate that you should (typically) right-click on a particular element of the graphical user interface. Although right-click is the common, default way to do this, there are other ways to accomplish the same thing - this term refers to any of them, and the result is always that a menu specific to the item you clicked on will be displayed.
We refer to mouse buttons as Left, Middle and Right. Ardour can use additional buttons, but they have no default behaviour in the program.
When the manual refers to the "pointer", it means the on-screen representation of the mouse position or the location of a touch action if you are using a touch interface.