Template:Key press/doc

This is a documentation subpage for Template:Key press. It contains usage information, categories, interlanguage links and other content that is not part of the original template page.

This is the {{key press}} template, which can be used to illustrate keystrokes. Typographically it works best with examples that are separated from the normal flow of text, e.g. in table cells. It can also be used in lists (as in this page), but it may be a good idea to add an empty line between each list item, so the key borders won't overlap each other.

Example:

{{key press|A}} produces A

Keystroke combinations

To illustrate keystroke combinations, just use extra parameters:

{{key press|Alt|P}} produces Alt+P

{{key press|Ctrl|Alt|Del}} produces Ctrl+Alt+Del

This template currently handles up to 5 key name parameters. If it gets too many key name parameters it reports the page into Category:Wikipedia key press template parameter needs fixing. This means we can easily find those pages and fix them, or we can discover if we need to make this template take more parameters.

When you feed several key names to this template, it adds a "+" with no spaces around. This means it won't line wrap. But when you show key combinations for instance in a table then that might cause too wide items. Then instead manually build the key combination with spaces around the "+" so it can line wrap. Like this:

{{key press|Ctrl}} + {{key press|Alt}} + {{key press|Del}} produces Ctrl + Alt + Del

On the other hand, to illustrate Windows Alt codes you might want to use separate templates with no intervening punctuation or space. In most Windows systems in North America and Western Europe, for example, the plus-minus sign (±) can be entered by holding down the Alt key while typing 0177 (with the numeric keypad). This could be illustrated like this:

{{key press|Alt|0}}{{key press|1}}{{key press|7}}{{key press|7}} produces Alt+0177

Wikilinks

If there is an article about the key you can wikilink the key's name like any other wiki text. Like this:

{{key press|[[Alt key|Alt]]}} produces Alt

If you are wikilinking the keys, please ensure that you are piping to the correct page (e.g. [[Control key|Ctrl]] instead of [[Ctrl]], which leads to a disambiguation page).

Wiki characters

Some wiki markup character, like the Pipe symbol, the Semicolon and the Equals sign, need to be entered using the {{!}}, {{;}} and {{=}} templates:

{{key press|{{!}}}} produces |