Vision

V i s i o n

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nana

Using your keyboard efficiently - May 07, 2001
Wade Majors <wade@ezri.org>

There are a bunch of keyboard shortcuts that you can use in Vision that will improve your user experience immensely. We have also included some "muscle memory" shortcuts to make the transition from Baxter or Bowser easier.

Just a quick table of modifiers for those not familiar with the naming scheme of modifiers in BeOS:

[Cmd] = Alt by default, however you might have changed this to Ctrl in your Menu preferences.
[Opt] = Windows Key. If you don't have a Windows key, the Ctrl key on the right side of your keyboard serves the same function.
[Ctrl] = Ctrl by default, however you might have changed this to Alt in your Menu preferences.
[Shift] = Shift :)

The keys:

[Up] - Pressing this while the input control has focus will cycle through your recently entered text.
[Down] - Cycles through the same list as above, but in the opposite direction.
[Cmd]+[Up] - Activates the window that appears above the currently active (selected) one in the Window List
[Cmd]+[Left] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Baxter.
[Cmd]+[Comma] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Bowser.
[Cmd]+[Down] - Activates the window that appears below the currently active (selected) one in the Window List
[Cmd]+[Right] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Baxter.
[Cmd]+[Period] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Bowser.
[Cmd]+[P] - Closes the active window. Consistant with Baxter.
[Cmd]+[/] - Activates the parent Server Window for the active (selected) window. Consistant with Bowser.
[Opt]+[Cmd]+[T] - Opens a Terminal session. Nice if you use TermHire and use the shortcut everywhere out of habit.

Here come the really nice shortcuts. The ones that makes the life of those in multiple channels much much easier.

[Shift]+[Cmd]+[Up] - Similar to [Cmd]+[Up], but with a twist. Instead of activating the window immedietly above the current one, it looks ahead. If there are any windows with higher status bits then the current window, it jumps to those. It jumps to the highest found status bit first.

To understand this, you must know that Vision color codes windows in the list with different "status bits" depending on how its contents have changed since it last had focus:
- black - no new text
- gray - new text, but nothing exciting (joins, parts, etc)
- green - someone has said something
- red - someone has said something, and mentioned your nickname
Vision treats these with sequential priority. When you press [Shift]+[Cmd]+[Up], Vision will first jump to a red window above the current one if it sees one. If it doesn't see a red one, it will jump to a green one, and so on. Really very handy, eh?
[Shift]+[Cmd]+[Left] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Baxter.
[Shift]+[Cmd]+[Comma] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Bowser.
[Shift]+[Cmd]+[Down] - This is the same gig as [Shift]+[Cmd]+[Up], but going Down instead of Up. Pure genius!
[Shift]+[Cmd]+[Right] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Baxter.
[Shift]+[Cmd]+[Period] - Same function as above. Provided to ease the transition from Bowser.
[Shift]+[Cmd]+[NumPad 0] - Switches to the last active window. Why NumPad 0? Because on a standard keyboard, when your fingers are using the directional arrows, your pinky is probably resting right there on the 0. It's right there! Why not take advantage of it?

So there you have it. I hope these shortcuts become useful to you. I always appreciate feedback, my email address is at the top of this document.