Re: How the heck to customize the keyboard?
- From: Morten Kromberg <mkrom@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 08:56:12 -0800 (PST)
On Dec 12, 7:57 am, AAsk <AA2e...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
This is irritating for me also, when using Dyalog. I believe that part
of the Dyalog thinking is that the left ALT is used by Windows (for
keyboard shortcuts); however, this (compliance with Windows
conventions) cannot be the whole story since other standard short cuts
do not work e.g. CTRL + C etc in most places. APL+Win & APLX seem to
have managed the ALT keyboard without falling foul of Windows
conventions.
If there is a way to make Dyalog use the ALT key for the APL keyboard,
I too am interested in adopting the solution.
The reason for the "Dyalog Thinking" is that Windows uses the Alt key
for accelerator keys. So in an APL system which in which Alt+F gives
you "_", you cannot type Alt+F to open the File Menu - something that
all Windows users expect. The APL+Win session "cheats": It allows you
to get at the menus by pressing Alt, releasing it, and then type F -
but I don't see how it can be possible to have GUI forms which allow
you to enter APL characters AND use accelerator keys using this
keyboard. There is currently no way to get Dyalog to use the Alt key:
Although keyboards are completely programmable, Windows grabs the
accelerators before we see them, and we'd have to do "bad things" to
get round this. For Unicode keyboards designed for use in *any*
Windows application, Alt is definitely not an option: Windows will
steal the accelerators before you get a chance to generate APL
symbols.
AFTER we picked CTRL for APL symbols, Windows added Ctrl+C-X-V as
shortcuts for copy-cut-paste. At the time we made the decision, the
Windows standard was Ctrl+Ins/Shift+Del/Shift+Ins (these keys still
work fine). Several of our distributors have defined input translate
tables for Dyalog APL where Ctrl+SHIFT+X-C-V are used for the APL
symbols on those keys, and ctrl/copy/paste are available without
shift. We should arguably adopt this for all keyboards, but have not
yet overcome inertia. There will always be people who moan when you
make any change to the keyboard :-).
AltGr seems a good choice for "APL Shift" key in many languages; the
bad news is that more an more applications are starting to use ALtGr
(which can also be types as Alt+Ctrl on keyboards without a special
AltGr key) for common accelerators.
Applications are getting more and more competitive about the keys, and
so are many human language keyboards, now that Unicode is becoming
common. We need some more shift keys, I think: Linux is apparently a
bit better at allowing you to distinguish between left and right
shift, but ... that's Linux.
Morten
.
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- How the heck to customize the keyboard?
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