Keys#

Everything is the leader (C-a by default) and then a key. Pressing the leader twice sends it to the program in the pane.

C-a ? shows a cheatsheet built from the bindings your config actually has, so it cannot disagree with your keyboard. C-a p opens the same list as a palette you can type into.

On a terminal too short for the whole sheet it shows what fits and says how much it did not — +7 more, in docs/keys.md, which is the table below.

Defaults#

x/X, p/P, w/W and f/F are deliberately shifted pairs on one letter. Close this pane / close this tab; run a command / tag this pane; go to a project / write this project down; float this pane / float a fresh one. The shifted half is the same verb on a bigger thing, or the thing you reach for within a moment of the other, so the shift is less to remember than a second letter would have been.

X says how many panes went with the tab, since most of them were not the one you were looking at. On the last tab it refuses and points at q instead: a key that closes a tab four times and ends your session the fifth is one you cannot press without counting first.

Rebinding#

C-a is a default, not a decision. If you want it back for start-of-line — and plenty of people do — one line takes it:

keys { prefix "ctrl+b" }        // or ctrl+space, or alt+x, or ...

Everything that names the prefix follows what you bound: the badge in the status bar, the cheatsheet's C-a then: caption, the palette's key column.

A keys block adds to the defaults rather than replacing them, so binding one key leaves the rest alone. "none" takes a binding away:

keys {
    bind "v" "split-cols"       // as well as \
    bind "-" "none"             // and no more splitting into rows
}

Modifiers are ctrl+ alt+ shift+ super+, or the shorthand the cheatsheet prints: C- M- S-. Named keys are left right up down enter tab escape space backspace home end pageup pagedown delete insert backslash minus slash comma period f1…f12, and the arrows can be written as ← → ↑ ↓ too — so a chord copied off the cheatsheet is a chord you can paste into a config.

Anything else is the character you press. That includes the shifted ones, which carry their own shift: "?" is "shift+slash", "H" is "shift+h", "|" is "shift+backslash". A punctuation binding written that way answers both encodings, because whether your terminal reports ? with a shift modifier or as a bare byte is up to your terminal and not to what you meant.

slosh --check reads a config and says what it could not honour, one problem per line with a file and a line number. Worth running after editing bindings by hand.

Without the leader#

Bindings in a direct block fire the moment you press them:

keys {
    direct {
        bind "ctrl+alt+left" "focus-left"
        bind "ctrl+alt+right" "focus-right"
    }
}

That chord is then gone from every program in every pane, because it has to be. It is a footgun and it is yours; the cheatsheet lists direct bindings apart, under "without the leader", so the C-a then: caption above stays true.

Every action#

Any of these can be bound, and any of them can be run from the palette without being bound at all.

> and < are the shifted period and comma. A terminal does not report the shift for punctuation, so . and , answer to them too — the same deal / has with ?, and the reason the defaults bind both halves.

scroll-up and scroll-down have no default key — the wheel does that job — which is exactly the case the palette exists for. So does clear-shaders, which undoes whatever the program in a pane painted on it (shaders); bind it if you leave in_band_shaders on.

workspaces, save-workspace and set-purpose are the other way round: all three are bound by default, to w, W and P, so the palette is a second way to reach them rather than the only one.