Hi Esther,
Ester wrote: I was in the Apple Store today trying out MacBook and
MacBook Pro laptops
and I found that I could get some of the number pad functions to work
even though these laptops (since December 2007) have been made without
the num lock function of the F6 key. Specifically, if I turned on
mouse keys, then FN+i worked like a mouse click just as if I had
pressed
"5" on the number pad of a full keyboard, or tried this on the number
pad area of my own laptop. Someone who is familiar with Numpad
Commander
in Leopard can check whether other commands work on these laptops
when you use this mode.
TK: This is a very interesting discovery indeed. Using Leopard, I
turned on the NumPad controller as suggested by Esther. I then set
Mouse Keys to be able to be turned on by pressing the Option key 5
times. The main area of the virtual NumPad now becomes available.
That is, 7-8-9 on the top row, U-I-O becomes 4-5-6, J-K-L becomes
1-2-3 M becomes 0 and the period is the decimal. With Keyboard
Practice on, along with Mouse Keys, this is confirmed as VO
announces the key and also announces the command associated to the
specific key of the NumPad Controller. The limitations come when
you attempt to access the other keys on the NumPad such as plus,
minus clear etc. There is no reference to these keys in this
version of the virtual NumPad. You can though use the modifier keys
like ctrl, option, command and shift to map those commands to the
existing number keys. For example, I mapped the Perform Action as
option-5 or option-I and the Contextual menu to ctrl-5 or ctrl-I.
Now, the problem arises when attempting to use MacOS keyboard commands
because the cmd-key has lost its functionality for pressing things
like cmd-w to close or cmd-o to Open. I imagine that I could get used
to using a double-click of the "5" or "I" key to open instead but
there still would be some frustrations in that regard. Someone else
may have a work around for this but in my limited testing I couldn't
come up with a good idea yet.
This may take some getting used to but certainly has some promise.
Very good Esther, thank you.
Later...
Tim Kilburn
& Carter the Canine
Fort McMurray, AB Canada
