Template:Key press/doc

This is the key press template primarily designed to illustrate keys and keystrokes on a computer keyboard. With additional parameters, a single template can even illustrate a combination of multiple simultaneous keystrokes. A sequence of keystrokes, on the other hand, need to be demonstrated with separate templates.

Example
 * → A

Keystroke combinations
To illustrate keystroke combinations, just use extra parameters:
 * → Alt
 * → Ctrl

This template currently handles up to 10 key name parameters, which should be more than enough to accommodate for any possible combination of simultaneous keystrokes. If it gets too many key name parameters it reports the page into Category:WikiDevi keypress 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 "+" (or whatever the contents of the optional chain parameter) 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:
 * + +  → Ctrl + Alt + Del
 * → Ctrl

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  (with the numeric keypad):
 * → Alt177

An example of a use case where more than 5 might be used is explaining usage of a macro (keyboard shortcut) created by a third-party application:
 * → Ctrl

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

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

Wiki markup characters
Some wiki markup character, like the pipe symbol, the semicolon and the equals sign, need to be entered using the !, ; and = templates or as an HTML entity &amp;#124;, &amp;#59;, &amp;#61; respectively:
 * → &#124;
 * → &#59;
 * → &#61;
 * → &#59;
 * → &#61;
 * → &#61;

However, if the characters are marked as wikilinks, they can be entered as such:

Most markup characters also have aliases:
 * → pipe
 * → semicolon
 * → equals
 * → colon
 * → asterisk
 * → hash

Key symbols
Some key names have a fitting Unicode character. This template automatically adds such "icons" to the following key names among others (see also Arrows exception below). There are no characters for the Windows key and Menu key. So this template shows approximate characters for them, namely the 'SQUARED PLUS' and 'STRICTLY EQUIVALENT TO' from the Mathematical Operators block:
 * → Shift
 * → Tab
 * → Enter
 * → Option
 * → Opt
 * → Command
 * → Cmd
 * → Caps Lock
 * → Scroll Lock
 * → Up
 * → Down
 * → Left
 * → Right
 * → Win
 * → Menu

Video games
Video game controllers often have specialized input labels that do not map easily. The following are mappings for various game consoles and input features.

Directional input
The following should only be used when the input sequence uses something other than the primary input or mixes input between directional devices.
 * → l-down
 * → c-left
 * → r-up

Stick specific diagonals are also supported:
 * → l-nw
 * → c-se
 * → r-ne

PlayStation

 * → ex
 * → circle
 * → triangle
 * → square

Technical details
This template calls key press/core, which holds the code that otherwise would be repeated several times in key press, thus simplifying the code.