Re: ALT as a click modifier

[Fred Kiefer]

I tend to agree with Wolfgang here. Basically the GNUstep code is
correct and documented to be that way. I understand that for many
keyboards this may not be as user friendly as we wish to be, but then
the current GNUstep keybindings don't match that well with any of the
existing desktop environments. If a user wants to have a nicely
integrated GNUstep set-up, she will have to redefine a few keys anyway.

What I would not like to see is the code doing some undocumented magic,
that is, detecting what keyboard is connected and remapping keys in some
clever, undocumented way. That will result in GNUstep behaving
completely differently when the user switches the keyboard.
We really need to have all the behaviour here documented, as it will be
surprising for most users anyway. If we ever change anything here,
please remember to document it in the file
gui/Documentation/GuiUser/KeyboardSetup.gsdoc.

A few years ago I tried very hard to come up with a keyboard usage that
would work on more machines in a sensible way. I failed. This does not
mean that there isn't such a set-up, it may just be hard to find. But as
long as I don't see a proposal that fully convinces me, we should stick
with the old set-up, that works at least on my machine :-)

That said, I see no problem in defining a second default key for ALT and
Command if there are good proposals.

Fred




On 25.07.2013 17:32, Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> Wolfgang Lux wrote:
>> okay, I'm going to stick my head out, though I guess I'm not that much
>> qualified to answer for I'm using only Apple keyboards for a long time.
> Appreciated! Since everything started with making an application more
> "standard" by request of a user. Although there are no real standards,
> it is more a customary thing in this case: we are not speaking about
> copy&paste or menu entries, but a zoom in/out modifier.
>> So, how many keyboards are out there without a Windows or other extra
>> key? PC keyboards come along with a Windows key for quite sometime now.
> That is true but it is not always available. At work for example I often
> use a remote display and the X server doesn't "pass" the windows key.
> Some laptops miss it, etc.
> 
>> OpenStep used to map the Alt key to Command and AltGr to the Alt key
>> on traditional PC keyboards (without a Windows key). This should work
>> for GNUstep, too. So I think the 5th option, which you should choose,
>> would be doing nothing at all. Except possibly checking whether the
>> default mapping for our modifier keys is reasonable.
> But that works I suppose only on Italian or German keyboards where AltGr
> is actually a different key. A US keyboard has there a normal Alt.
> 
> "Doing nothing" has one disadvantage: Even with a "windows" "Super" or
> "command" equipped machine, the *default* setting of GNUstep (which will
> be used by the majority) will result in a non-working zoom option, Thus
> either one reconfigures GNUstep as I do, or I offer some sort of
> customization.
> 
> In other words, by prorgam is correct, it is capable of working, but the
> user will need some setup before he can use it.