Changing the keys¶

Every debugger key can be rebound. Open Settings > Preferences… > Debugger Keys in the emulator window, click the shortcut you want to change, and press the combination you want. Click Reset on a row to put that one back, or Reset All to Defaults for the lot. Nothing is written until you press OK or Apply, and Apply takes effect immediately in both windows — you do not have to restart JNEXT.

The seventeen commands, and what they are bound to out of the box:

Command	Default	Also reachable from
Run / Continue	F5	toolbar, Debug menu
Pause / Break	F9	toolbar, Debug menu
Single Step	F6	toolbar, Debug menu
Step Over	F7	toolbar, Debug menu
Step Out	F8	toolbar, Debug menu
Step Back	Shift+F7	toolbar, Debug menu
Frame Back	Shift+F6	toolbar, Debug menu
Run to Cursor	unbound	Enter in the disassembly or the Source tab, right-click ▸ Run to Here
Run to End of Frame	unbound	toolbar, Debug menu
Run to End of Scan Line	unbound	toolbar, Debug menu
Enable / Disable Trace	F2	toolbar, Debug ▸ Trace
Export Trace…	F3	toolbar, Debug ▸ Trace
Source Step Into	Ctrl+F6	Source tab, Debug ▸ Source
Source Step Over	Ctrl+F7	Source tab, Debug ▸ Source
Source Step Out	Ctrl+F8	Source tab, Debug ▸ Source
Source Step Back	unbound	Source tab, Debug ▸ Source
Source Reverse Continue	unbound	Source tab, Debug ▸ Source

Five ship with no key at all (Run to Cursor, Run to End of Frame, Run to End of Scan Line, Source Step Back and Source Reverse Continue). They are not second-class — they are reachable from the toolbar or the Source tab, the menus and (for Run to Cursor) the Enter key — but giving them a default would have meant taking a key away from something else, so the choice is left to you. If you are coming from blueMSX or Spectaculator, Run to Cursor is the one you will want to bind.

The source steps default to Ctrl+F6, Ctrl+F7 and Ctrl+F8, the instruction steps' keys with Ctrl added. Ctrl+F6 is also the emulator window's Stop Recording key and keeps that meaning there: the two are different windows, so they do not clash. A key the desktop takes for itself never reaches JNEXT; rebind the command here if that happens.

The toolbar captions follow the bindings, so a button never advertises a key that no longer works.

What you can bind¶

A combination is up to four modifiers and one key:

Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Meta + KEY

KEY is F1–F12, a letter, a digit, or one of Space, Tab, Return, Backspace, Escape, Insert, Delete, Home, End, PageUp, PageDown, Up, Down, Left or Right.

Four kinds of combination are refused, and the dialog says which and why:

A key with no Ctrl, Alt or Meta, unless it is F1–F12. A plain letter, digit or arrow bound window-wide would be taken before the panel you are typing into ever sees it — the memory panel edits hex with the bare number and letter keys, and the disassembly has an address box. Shift+F6 is fine: the key is still a function key.
Alt + a letter. The debugger's menu bar owns those. Alt+F5 is accepted (and so is Alt+Shift+F6), but Alt+Shift+F5 and Alt+Shift+F9 are refused: they are the emulator window's Quick Save and Quick Load Snapshot. On a Mac the host shortcuts are Cmd chords, and the same two sets move with them: Cmd+1 to Cmd+8 (the script host keys) and Cmd+Shift+F5 / Cmd+Shift+F9 are refused there, and the Option forms are free.
Ctrl+C and Ctrl+A. The disassembly panel's Copy and Select All.
A combination another debugger command already has. Rebind that one first. This is refused rather than silently taken over, because Qt answers two identical shortcuts by firing them alternately, which breaks both.

Five combinations are not refused but do get a warning, because the emulator window already uses them: Ctrl+F5 (record), Ctrl+F6 (stop recording), F4 (soft reset), F11 (fullscreen) and Alt+F4 (quit). On a Mac the set differs: every ⌘ host shortcut (the keymap writes ⌘ as Ctrl: Ctrl+O, Ctrl+L, Ctrl+S, Ctrl+K, Ctrl+Q, Ctrl+R, Ctrl+U, Ctrl+T, Ctrl+D, Ctrl+Shift+S) warns too, the recording pair is Control+F5 / Control+F6 (written Meta+F5 / Meta+F6), the fullscreen chord Ctrl+Meta+F, and there is no Alt+F4. You can bind them — F11 for Step Into is a popular choice — and they will work in the debugger window. The emulator window keeps its own use of them, and the message under the table says so when you pick one.

Two things that are not refused, and are worth knowing:

Ctrl is free here, unlike in the emulator window, where Ctrl is the Spectrum's SYMBOL SHIFT. The debugger is a separate window and nothing you type in it reaches the emulated machine.
F11 is free here too, even though it is the emulator window's fullscreen toggle — again because the debugger is a separate window.

The emulator window¶

Run, Pause, Single Step, Step Over and Step Out also work while the emulator window has focus, whenever the debugger is enabled, and they follow your bindings there as well. The other twelve do not: they work in the debugger window only. Trace in particular stays out of it because its default, F2, is the emulator window's window-scale cycler.

Two consequences of that forwarding:

Binding one of those five to a key the emulator window uses for something of its own — F1 power reset, F4 soft reset, F10 DivMMC, F11 fullscreen, F2 scale — takes that function away while the debugger is enabled. This is not new: Pause has always taken F9 away from the Multiface NMI button. Rebind it if you want the other one back.
A modified version of a forwarded key is no longer swallowed. With the default bindings, Shift+F9 in the emulator window fires the Multiface NMI instead of pausing, and Shift+F5/F6/F7/F8 reach the machine's own function keys — the same thing they do with the debugger closed. Only the exact combination you bound is taken.
The reverse happens for keys the emulator window binds as a menu shortcut, such as Ctrl+F5 and Ctrl+F6 (start and stop video recording): there the menu item wins and the debugger command is not forwarded. It still works normally inside the debugger window.

Editing the file by hand¶

Redefinitions live in ~/.jnext/jnext.conf:

[debugger_keys]
step_over=F10
step_into=F11
step_out=Shift+F11
run_to_cursor=Ctrl+F10

The action names are run, pause, step_into, step_over, step_out, step_back, frame_back, run_to_cursor, run_to_eof, run_to_eosl, trace_toggle, trace_export, source_step_into, source_step_over, source_step_out, source_step_back and source_reverse_continue. Case does not matter in a combination, and none means "no key". Only redefinitions are written, so the section holds just the lines you changed — and is absent entirely if you changed nothing.

Nothing here fails quietly. An entry JNEXT cannot parse, one that breaks a rule above, one naming an action it does not know, or two actions asking for the same combination: each is printed on the console when JNEXT starts and listed in red at the top of the Debugger Keys tab. A bad entry leaves its action at the default; a clash leaves the losing action with no key at all rather than leaving you with two half-working ones. An action name JNEXT does not recognise is kept in the file rather than deleted, so opening an older JNEXT cannot throw away a newer one's setting.