Re: key themes (cont.)

["J. Patrick Narkinsky" <patrick amphigory tez net>]

On 13 Feb 1998, Tom Tromey wrote:

> >> Why not just an easy frontend to do what xmodmap does?  X already
> >> has a concept of "keymappings" which allows for a given key to be
> >> mapped to a symbolic entity.  E.g., Backspace doesn't work in
> >> Netscape by default under linux because netscape expects backspace
> >> to mapped to the "Backspace" keysym; under Linux, it is mapped to
> >> the "Delete" keysym.
> 
> As Elliot says, a port of xkeycaps is on the to-do list.
> 
> However, this won't really satisfy the need for key themes.  As I
> understand it, we can't just randomly introduce new keysyms.  So,
> e.g., we couldn't make one called "cancel" that we could then bind to
> cancel a dialog.
> 
> Support for this sort of thing has to be in gtk/gnome.
> 

Why can't we introduce new keysyms?  OSF did (for Motif).  Admitted, I'm
not an expert on what is involved, but I do know that there is some
facility inherent in X whereby we can bind arbitrary text to a particular
keycode. 

My real point is that the issue of keybindings is something that, by
rights, should happen at the X layer (or other display abstraction layer
if that idea every happens.)  Should we provide an easy way to manipulate
it?  Certainly.  Should we reprogram it and slow things down even more?
No.

Patrick

(p.s. See the following excerpt from my XKeysymdb:

osfCopy:1004FF02
osfCut:1004FF03
osfPaste:1004FF04
osfBackTab:1004FF07
osfBackSpace:1004FF08
osfClear:1004FF0B
osfEscape:1004FF1B
osfAddMode:1004FF31
osfPrimaryPaste:1004FF32
osfQuickPaste:1004FF33
osfPageLeft:1004FF40
osfPageUp:1004FF41 

)


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J. Patrick Narkinsky | God doesn't like intellectual slackers any
                     | better than he likes any other kind of slacker.
                     |                          - C.S. Lewis
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