Modifying your shortcut keys

Overview

Many hotkeys (or key shortcuts) in Studio use Eclipse's key mappings by default. You can modify these settings on your own if you would like your hotkeys to be similar to Emacs, Dreamweaver, Visual Studio, or another IDE. Some commands are contributed via Rubles and must be edited using a different mechanism, outlined at the bottom of the page.

You can also export your keybindings to a file and import them into Aptana. This is useful if you want to share keybinding settings with another user or if you are running multiple instances of Aptana and want to use the same key settings for each instance.

Instructions (Eclipse-based Commands)

This section explains how to modify your shortcut keys and how to export and import your keybinding settings.

Modifying your key settings

To modify your key settings:

1. From the Window menu, select Preferences to open the Preferences window.
2. On the Preferences tree on the left, expand General > Keys to change your key settings (shown below):
   
3. In the Keys window, select the Command or Binding that you want to modify, which auto-populates the existing key setting for you in the Name and Binding fields (shown below).
   
4. In the Binding field, you can re-map the key sequence. For example, you can change the current Ctrl+F6 shortcut, which tabs to the next open Editor tab, to Ctrl+tab.
   1. In the Binding field, place your cursor on the current key setting (for example, Ctrl+F6), and press the backspace key to delete the old shortcut.
   2. Type the key sequence for the new shortcut (for example, Ctrl+tab) to create the new shortcut.
5. Click the OK button to apply and save your changes.
   Aptana retains the new key mappings that you set.

Exporting and importing your keybindings

To export your keybindings:

1. From the File menu, select Export... to open the Export window.
2. On the Export window, expand the General tab, select Preferences, and click the Next button to go to the Export Preferences screen.
3. On the Export Preferences screen, choose the Choose specific preferences to export option.
4. From the Preferences list, check the Keys Preferences box.
5. To the right of the To preference file field, click the Browse button to browse to the location where you want to save the preferences file for your keybindings.
6. Click the Finish button.
   Aptana saves your keybindings as an .epf file.

If you want to import keybindings, you will need to import an .epf file. This can be a file that you created using the "export" instructions, or a file that someone else created for key preferences.

To import keybindings:

1. From the File menu, select Import... to open the Import window.
2. On the Import window, expand the General tab, select Preferences, and click the Next button to go to the Import Preferences screen.
3. To the right of the From preference file field, click the Browse button, and browse to the .epf file containing the key preferences that you want.
4. On the Preferences list, check the box next to Key Preferences. (This will automatically choose the Choose specific preferences to import option for you.)
5. Click the Finish button.
   Aptana imports the keybindings from the preference file that you specified.

Instructions (Ruble-based Commands)

Rubles do not currently allow associated key commands to be changed using the regular Eclipse mechanism. In this case, you will need to edit the bundle directly.

Modifying the Built-In Bundles

1. Find the bundle that contains the command you are interested in. If you don't know which command is the one you want to switch, use the menu item Commands > Bundle Development > Show Command Bindings
2. Select the menu item Commands > Bundle Name > Edit this Bundle. It will create a project in your workspace with the contents of that bundle.
3. Open up the bundle project, and find the command of interest under the "commands" folder. In general, the command file name will be reflective of the command in the menu.
4. Edit (or add) the key_binding section as part of the command. If you need to use modifier keys, see the reference Ruble Specification on how to specify keys such as Command, Shift, Option, and Control.
5. Restart Studio. Your new key bindings should be in effect.

Example

As an example, we modify the keys for commenting code:

1. Select the menu "Commands > Source > Edit this bundle."

2. Open the file Source / commands / toggle_comment.rb.

   command 'Comment Line / Selection' do | cmd |    cmd.key_binding = 'M1+K'    cmd.output = :insert_as_snippet    cmd.input = :selection, :line    ...

3. Edit the key_bindings property to use the new key command.
4. Save the file and restart Studio. The command should work as expected.