This section covers some of the typographical and language conventions used in this manual.
Keyboard bindings are shown like this: s or x.
x means "press the key, keep it pressed and then also press the x key".
You may also see key combinations such as e, which mean that you should hold down the key and the key, and then, while keeping them both down, 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, you will see Cmd where appropriate (for instance in the first example above). On other machines you will see Ctrl instead.
We refer to mouse buttons as Left, Middle and Right. Ardour can use additional buttons, but they have no default behaviour in the program.
Many editing functions are performed by clicking the mouse while holding a modifier key, for example Left.
Some GUI elements can optionally be controlled with the mouse wheel when the pointer is hovering over them. The notation for mouse wheel action is ⇑ ⇐ ⇓ ⇒.
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.
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.
Ardour supports hardware controllers, such as banks of faders, knobs, or buttons.
Menu items are indicated like this:
Top > Next > Deeper.
Each ">"-separated item indicates one level of 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 item indicates either a (sub-) menu or a tabbed dialog navigation. The final item is the one to choose or select.
If you are requested to deselect an option, you will see something like this:
Edit > Preferences > Audio > Some other Option.
Some dialogs or features may require you to type in some data such as this. In rare cases, you will be required to perform certain operations at the command line of your operating system:
cat /proc/cpuinfo sleep 3600 ping www.google.comImportant messages from Ardour or other programs will be displayed like this.
Important notes about things that might not otherwise be obvious are shown in this format.
Hairy issues that might cause things to go wrong, lose data, impair sound quality, or eat your proverbial goldfish, are displayed in this way.