Well . . .

Xerox's Alto and Dorado were the first commercial systems with mice, and used the button colors we see in Smalltalk and Squeak today. The first widely-distributed mouse-equipped personal computer was the Mac, the design of which leaned heavily on the private demonstrations Apple's people saw of Smalltalk at PARC, but the Mac, of course, had just a single button. Microsoft made the two-button mouse a standard, though there have been other offshoots with as many as a dozen or more buttons.

The three-button mouse is finally once again coming to the forefront, most commonly in the wheel-mouse optimized for internet browsing.

Frankly, I think the mouse button issue is far and away more confusing in terms of platform independance than the Ctrl vs. Alt issue.

Gary Fisher Sent at 9:04AM EDT

----- Original Message ----- From: "John Hinsley" jhinsley@telinco.co.uk To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2001 8:08 AM Subject: Re: {bad habits] Squeak for Windows - Ctrl instead of Alt key

G.J.Tielemans@dinkel.utwente.nl wrote:

...

2. Wasn't the design of the red yellow and blue buttons not just the

solution for platform (mouse) independency?

I *think* all mice were red, yellow and blue, once upon a time. Then some folk started bodging together OSs which could only handle two mice buttons and the rot set in. I think it's a tragedy: using the middle (yellow) button to copy and paste is a real time saver.

As to the Alt & Ctrl keypress debate, I'm actually happy enough with it as it is. While I've no objection to some swap around appearing as a preference, I'd like Squeak, by default, to operate the same on all OSs.

Cheers

John

-- If you don't care about your data, like file systems which automagically destroy themselves and have money to burn on 3rd party tools to keep your system staggering on, Microsoft (tm) have the Operating System for you.

Folks,

There is something I wanted to ask about the Ctrl vs. Alt preference on Windows now that Ned's change is in (btw, Ned that was a pretty piece of work). Is there any general feeling of what the default should be?! E.g., we *do* have the ability to set per-platform preferences on startup and if there's a general opinion to have the editing keys use Ctrl instead of Alt I'd be willing to make the change (although I will switch back almost instantly - I tried it for about half an hour and it drove me insane that Ctrl-C is copy but Alt-S is save and that Ctrl-F is ifFalse and Alt-F is find...).

Cheers, - Andreas

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 02:22 pm, Andreas Raab wrote:

I tried it for about half an hour and it drove me insane that Ctrl-C is copy but Alt-S is save and that Ctrl-F is ifFalse and Alt-F is find...).

You can swap those too...

InputSensor installSwappedKeyEntryFor: $s. InputSensor installSwappedKeyEntryFor: $f.

though I think these will be reset if you turn swapping off and back on.

Ned Konz wrote:

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 02:22 pm, Andreas Raab wrote:

...

I tried it for about half an hour and it drove me insane that Ctrl-C is copy but Alt-S is save and that Ctrl-F is ifFalse and Alt-F is find...).

You can swap those too...

InputSensor installSwappedKeyEntryFor: $s. InputSensor installSwappedKeyEntryFor: $f.

though I think these will be reset if you turn swapping off and back on.

I would strongly recommend having the preference swap all eight keys which are currently reversed in Windows versus Squeak. I believe these eight keys are:

x (cut) c (copy) v (paste) a (select all) s (save) f (find) g (find again) z (undo)

(I don't think there are any other modifier keys that are letter-equivalent between Windows & Squeak.)

In other words, InputSensor class>>installKeyDecodeTable should be changed to use the collection { $c . $x . $v . $a . $s . $f . $g . $z } instead of what it has now.

I think this would prevent Andreas from going insane. :)

As far as whether the preference should be on by default on Windows platforms, there are pluses and minuses either way. I might lean toward having the preference on by default for Windows users, since the people who prefer Alt are probably more familiar with Squeak and would be more likely to know how to switch the preference back.

- Doug Way Detroit, MI

I also second Doug Way's recommendation, especially that long time users of squeak should be able to switch back and create their own ini-file.

Markus

Am Donnerstag den, 11. Juli 2002, um 01:46, schrieb Chris Becker:

It would prevent me from going insane too! Well, *more* insane, that is. 8-P

I second Doug Way's recommendation of:

{ $c . $x . $v . $a . $s . $f . $g . $z }

Thanks, guys, especially Andreas for offering to make the change.

Chris

-----Original Message----- From: squeak-dev-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:squeak-dev-admin@lists.squeakfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Doug Way Sent: Wednesday, July 10, 2002 6:12 PM To: squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org Subject: Re: [Win32][RFC]: Default settings for Ctrl vs. Alt

Ned Konz wrote:

...

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 02:22 pm, Andreas Raab wrote:

...

I tried it for about half an hour and it drove me insane that Ctrl-C is copy but Alt-S is save and that Ctrl-F is ifFalse and Alt-F is find...).

You can swap those too...

InputSensor installSwappedKeyEntryFor: $s. InputSensor installSwappedKeyEntryFor: $f.

though I think these will be reset if you turn swapping off and back on.

I would strongly recommend having the preference swap all eight keys which are currently reversed in Windows versus Squeak. I believe these eight keys are:

x (cut) c (copy) v (paste) a (select all) s (save) f (find) g (find again) z (undo)

(I don't think there are any other modifier keys that are letter-equivalent between Windows & Squeak.)

In other words, InputSensor class>>installKeyDecodeTable should be changed to use the collection { $c . $x . $v . $a . $s . $f . $g . $z } instead of what it has now.

I think this would prevent Andreas from going insane. :)

As far as whether the preference should be on by default on Windows platforms, there are pluses and minuses either way. I might lean toward having the preference on by default for Windows users, since the people who prefer Alt are probably more familiar with Squeak and would be more likely to know how to switch the preference back.

• Doug Way Detroit, MI

OK, my $.02. When copying and pasting between Squeak and other applications, I find that trying to remember to use Alt-c,v in Squeak but Ctrl-c,v in the other applications to be almost unbearable cognitive overload. (In other words, so much of my attention gets consumed trying to remember which keys to use that I forget what I am trying to accomplish.)

On the other hand, if I am working in Squeak, then using Alt-c,v flows well with the other key commands in Squeak.

So why not, as a default, do /both/.

(Right now, Ctrl-C,V appear to ignore the shift key, so Ctrl-c,v act like Ctrl-C,V. Don't know if that's a bug or a feature.)

david

At 11:22 PM 7/10/02 +0200, you wrote:

Folks,

There is something I wanted to ask about the Ctrl vs. Alt preference on Windows now that Ned's change is in (btw, Ned that was a pretty piece of work). Is there any general feeling of what the default should be?! E.g., we *do* have the ability to set per-platform preferences on startup and if there's a general opinion to have the editing keys use Ctrl instead of Alt I'd be willing to make the change (although I will switch back almost instantly - I tried it for about half an hour and it drove me insane that Ctrl-C is copy but Alt-S is save and that Ctrl-F is ifFalse and Alt-F is find...).

Cheers,

• Andreas

-- David Farber dfarber@numenor.com

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 03:31 pm, David Farber wrote:

On the other hand, if I am working in Squeak, then using Alt-c,v flows well with the other key commands in Squeak.

So why not, as a default, do /both/.

Except that ctrl-c and ctrl-v are already used for something (compare w/clipboard and paste author's initials/date stamp).

If this is interesting, it will work with the lookup table scheme in the current swapping code...

On Wednesday 10 July 2002 02:10 pm, Andrew C. Greenberg wrote:

...

As to the Alt & Ctrl keypress debate, I'm actually happy enough with it as it is. While I've no objection to some swap around appearing as a preference, I'd like Squeak, by default, to operate the same on all OSs.

So would I.

I want Squeak to behave the same:

I want it to use the normal keys for editing on the Mac: Cmd-whatever I want it to use the normal keys for editing in Windows: Ctrl-whatever I want it to use the normal keys for editing in KDE: Ctrl-whatever

It doesn't bother me that these keys have different names (and positions) on the different machines; because I use other programs besides Squeak I am already used to the different conventions.

The use of the Alt modifier is troublesome on some platforms and with some window managers, as it's often used for window manager commands.

I can (by messing around a bit) define a spare key on my keyboard as a Meta key to use with the window manager, but this isn't standard in XFree86.

Switching the window manager to use a different modifier key is not possible in Windows, AFAIK.

Anyway, the Alt/Ctrl swap (for C,V,X,A, and other keys as desired) has been added as a preference. And the default is to not have those keys swapped.

But I do think that there should be a note somewhere in the Readme.txt or elsewhere about being able to swap those keys (and the mouse buttons).