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Customized Keystrokes

When you start the program, it looks in the specified or default account directory, and in the Mailer directory, in that order, for a file named Custom.Keystrokes. If it finds such a file, it will replace entries in the program's default keystroke table (for keys which activate various functions while the browser portion of the program's main window has the system focus) with any matching entries in that file. So, for example, you could change the keystroke for deleting a message from Ctrl-D, the program's default, to the Delete key, for all of your accounts except one, by having a Custom.Keystrokes file in your Mailer directory and having another Custom.Keystrokes file in that one account's directory to change his Delete keystroke to Alt-D instead.

The Custom.Keystrokes file needs to have one entry on each line. An entry is made of two pieces of data, followed optionally by a comment. The first piece of data is the keystroke. Shift, Alt, and Ctrl keys, when used, are joined to the other piece of each keystroke's name by a plus (+) sign. Any space characters in a key name need to be replaced by underscore (_) characters. For example, the official Java name of the Page Down key is PAGE DOWN, so in the Custom.Keystrokes file you must say PAGE_DOWN instead.

Any number of space characters can come between the keystroke name and the second piece of data on each line. That second piece of data is the command that the program is to issue in response to the specified keystroke. Here, as a sample, is a Custom.Keystrokes file which would serve no purpose at all, because it specifies the exact keystroke/command combinations that the program uses by default if no Custom.Keystrokes file is found. The commands are listed here in order according to their appearance on the main window's toolbar and Message menu:

- Ctrl+PAGE_DOWN NextMessage
- Ctrl+PAGE_UP PrevMessage
- Ctrl+N NextUnread
- Ctrl+B PrevUnread
- Ctrl+X ToggleWindow
- Ctrl+W ToggleWordWrap
- Ctrl+P Print
- Ctrl+C ColorCode
- Ctrl+S StickyNotes
- Ctrl+R Reply
- Ctrl+F Forward
- Ctrl+M FolderMove
- Ctrl+D Delete
- Ctrl+H ToggleHeaders
- Ctrl+T ToggleFont

After those two pieces of data, any line may also contain any comments you want to put there, as long as you leave at least one space character between the command name and your comment.

Many keystrokes have different Java names in different operating systems, unfortunately. But at least the majority of those are keys to which people are rather unlikely to want to assign commands.

Here are the keys which have the same names under Windows and OS/2, at least, regardless of whether they're used by themselves or with Shift, Alt, or Ctrl:

- ESCAPE
- F1 through F10
- 1 through 0
- BACKSPACE
- A through Z
- CAPS_LOCK
- ENTER
- SHIFT
- CTRL
- ALT
- SPACE
- INSERT
- DELETE
- HOME
- END
- PAGE_UP
- PAGE_DOWN
- UP
- DOWN
- LEFT
- RIGHT
- NUM_LOCK