Re: [] confession...
On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 08:40:08AM +0100, Polytropon wrote: On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:15:43 -0800, Gary Kline kl...@thought.org wrote: it's time to come clean an admit that i have never taken advantage of the option that lets you press [???], then press other keys in order so the result is like pressing multiple keys at once. After reading this paragraph, the whole thing sounds VERY familiar to me. In your mind, open a picture of a Sun Type 5 or 6 keyboard - or use google :-) - and look what's the key on the lower right of the alphanumeric section. It is - oh big surprise - the Compose key that acts quite the same way that you described. It enables the user to compose a new character by pressing its components one after another. I'm almost sure that this functionality can be forced upon other modifier keys, such as press shift - now shift mode is on for the next character, press '1', and you get '!'; now shift mode is off again. The same could work for the other modifiers (ctrl, meta, alt, alt-gr). In fact, Meta just works this way, e. g. in the Midnight Commander. For Meta-c, you press Esc, then c. The PC keyboard usually does not come with a Meta key, so this solution is very welcome. It can even emulate PF keys when the terminal emulation doesn't support them, e. g. PF2 = Esc, 2. everybody on this list has learned that forethought and planning beat typing speed! You are so right with that statement. Today's IT education, be it professional schools or universities, seem to spit out programmers that have coded some stuff in ten different languages, but are completely unable to program with just their brain, and maybe a pencil and some paper; this is old school, but produced all the programs the Internet runs on. And: No, trial error is not a programming concept. :-) i'm ready to set up the multi-key stuff that's built in to at least KDE. appreciate a pointer to a url or tutorial on this... and/or to know what this feature is even called. it's time to get practical. i am stubborn, just not particular stupid. maybe slow :_) Sadly, I've abandoned KDE many years ago, so I can't help you with that. Another list member pointed me to the Control Center where they sticky-keys setup stuff is in KDE. Along with a couple examples. (I'll say for the 60 000th time that a good example is worth a thousand words:) I don't know how things are with the current IT grads, but when I did my first two quarters in BASIC at night school, I spent literally hours with textbook, paper and pencil walking thru sample code until it sunk in. That gave me some ideas when I took my first quarter of FORTRAN IV. cheers! gary -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... -- Gary Kline kl...@thought.org http://www.thought.org Public Service Unix http://jottings.thought.org http://transfinite.thought.org The 7.31a release of Jottings: http://jottings.thought.org/index.php ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: [] confession...
On Mon, 23 Nov 2009 23:15:43 -0800, Gary Kline kl...@thought.org wrote: it's time to come clean an admit that i have never taken advantage of the option that lets you press [???], then press other keys in order so the result is like pressing multiple keys at once. After reading this paragraph, the whole thing sounds VERY familiar to me. In your mind, open a picture of a Sun Type 5 or 6 keyboard - or use google :-) - and look what's the key on the lower right of the alphanumeric section. It is - oh big surprise - the Compose key that acts quite the same way that you described. It enables the user to compose a new character by pressing its components one after another. I'm almost sure that this functionality can be forced upon other modifier keys, such as press shift - now shift mode is on for the next character, press '1', and you get '!'; now shift mode is off again. The same could work for the other modifiers (ctrl, meta, alt, alt-gr). In fact, Meta just works this way, e. g. in the Midnight Commander. For Meta-c, you press Esc, then c. The PC keyboard usually does not come with a Meta key, so this solution is very welcome. It can even emulate PF keys when the terminal emulation doesn't support them, e. g. PF2 = Esc, 2. everybody on this list has learned that forethought and planning beat typing speed! You are so right with that statement. Today's IT education, be it professional schools or universities, seem to spit out programmers that have coded some stuff in ten different languages, but are completely unable to program with just their brain, and maybe a pencil and some paper; this is old school, but produced all the programs the Internet runs on. And: No, trial error is not a programming concept. :-) i'm ready to set up the multi-key stuff that's built in to at least KDE. appreciate a pointer to a url or tutorial on this... and/or to know what this feature is even called. it's time to get practical. i am stubborn, just not particular stupid. maybe slow :_) Sadly, I've abandoned KDE many years ago, so I can't help you with that. -- Polytropon Magdeburg, Germany Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0 Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ... ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: [] confession...
On Tuesday 24 November 2009 09:15:43 Gary Kline wrote: it's time to come clean an admit that i have never taken advantage of the option that lets you press [???], then press other keys in order so the result is like pressing multiple keys at once. i have never made a big deal over having but one useful hand simply because in my line as a hacker, one hand was enough. programming at 95mph was never the goal. everybody on this list has learned that forethought and planning beat typing speed! ---still, when my shoulder began to dislocate in 1999, typing thr number-shift keys [like '*', '', '^', and the rest became harder [*]. i'm ready to set up the multi-key stuff that's built in to at least KDE. appreciate a pointer to a url or tutorial on this... and/or to know what this feature is even called. it's time to get practical. i am stubborn, just not particular stupid. maybe slow :_) If you're using KDE3.5, look for Regional and Accessibility|accessibility under the Control Centre. There are two options, and I think the one you need is called sticky-keys, which makes the modifier keys (shift, alt, ctrl) ``stay pressed'' until you press another key. In other words, you can type the old three-fingered salute by pressing and releasing ctrl, pressing and releasing alt, and then pressing and releasing del. There's also an option called ``lock sticky keys''. If you choose this, the sequence of separate press-releases: shift a b results in Ab (the shift only applies to the next key pressed) whereas the sequence shift shift a b c shift d results in ABCd (double-shift locks shift key on until it's pressed again). (The other options, slow keys and bounce keys, apply if muscle control is impaired and cause a key to have to be held for a set time before it registers, and released for a certain time before registering a second key-press). Jonathan ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
