Keypress Buffer

To the left of the prompt line is the key press buffer area. This area displays the last five keys typed into the main drawing window. The keypress buffer remembers up to 16 characters, though only the last five are shown. It is cleared when Esc or Ctrl-u is typed. If the key sequence in the buffer uniquely prefixes a menu command, the command name is displayed, and the command is executed. The command names are a short mnemonic, displayed in the ``tooltip'' that appears when the pointer rests over a command or menu button.

Most commands have at most five characters in their command name, the exceptions are the scripts in the User Menu. For these, the menu text is the same as the command name, and it may take more than five characters to uniquely define the command.

The keypress buffer can be forced to literally match menu items by typing Enter. Consider the two entries in the User Menu: spiral and spiralform. Typing ``spiral'' does nothing, as this is a prefix of both entries. In order to run spiral by typing the command prefix, type ``spiral'' then Enter. This works for any menu commands where one entire command is a prefix of another.

When the prompt line is in editing mode, i.e., a command is active that requires user text input, the keys display is replaced by buttons associated with the editing function. The key press display returns when editing mode is exited.

Each drawing window (main window and the sub-windows produced with the Viewport button in the View Menu) has its own keypress buffer, and matching commands will apply to the window into which the text was typed, if applicable. In sub-windows, the key press buffer displays in the menu bar area, to the right.