3.4 The Break gesture

The keyboard Break gesture is Meta+Ctrl+C.

This chooses a process that is useful to break, and breaks it.

Note that you cannot use Escape in place of Meta. As there are many different types of keyboard, if it is not possible to assert which is the Meta key on your keyboard, it may be marked with a special character, such as a diamond, or it may be one of the function keys - try F11.

Meta+Ctrl+C applies to both GTK+ and Motif. If your keyboard has the Break key, then you can also use this alternate break gesture. The key sequence can be configured using capi:set-interactive-break-gestures.

The process to break is chosen as follows:

1. If the break gesture is sent to any LispWorks IDE window or other CAPI interface that is waiting for events, it does "Interface break", as described below.
2. Otherwise it checks for a busy processes that is essential for LispWorks to work correctly, or that interacts with the user (normally that means that some CAPI interface uses it), or that is flagged as wanting interrupts (currently that means a REPL). If it finds such a busy process, it breaks it.
3. Otherwise it activates or starts the Process Browser. Note that this tool, documented in 22 The Process Browser, can be used to break any other process.

"Interface break" depends on the interface. For an interface that has another process, notably the Listener with its REPL, it breaks that other process. For most tools it starts the Process Browser, otherwise just it breaks the interface's process.