Ctrl, Alt and Menu keys (was: RE: Thinking about a better UI) (fwd)

Doug Way dway at mat.net
Wed May 19 15:05:16 UTC 1999


Like Stephen Pair's message, this message I sent last night didn't seem to
make it to the list either. (maybe the list was down for a bit?)  Here it
is again...


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:04:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Doug Way <dway at mat.net>
To: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Ctrl, Alt and Menu keys (was: RE: Thinking about a better UI)


It seems like a fairly safe alternative might be to add a VM-Preferences
item to the Windows VM to switch the mappings of the two keys.  The
default would be to leave the mappings alone, but this could be available
for those who are used to the control-key being the most-used modifier
key.  It's analogous in a lot of ways to the 2 vs. 3 button setting in
VM-Preferences.

(Also, Lex's idea wasn't a bad one, to have the text editors themselves
handle the switching.  I assume this would be one of the global
Preferences items?  I don't know if this might not end up being a little
more complicated than the VM-Preferences solution, though...) 

- Doug Way
  EAI/Transom Technogies, Ann Arbor, MI
  dway at eai.com, dway at mat.net
  http://www.transom.com



On Tue, 18 May 1999, Dino wrote:

> I strongly agree with this one....  I hate the friggin alt key!  It's
> simply so weird to use on a PC box.  Especially in my case since I use
> Linux and I never have to use the Alt-modifier key.  It's all ctrl-this
> ctrl-that in unix. 
> 
> -- Dino
> 
> Stephen Pair wrote:
> > 
> > Perhaps the Alt and Ctrl keys should simply be reversed on the Windows
> > platform.  I don't think their historical meanings are that important.  By
> > and large, people use Ctrl-XCV far more than they use the control
> > characters.  Perhaps there should also be a simple keyboard mapping
> > mechanism that can be made specific to the hardware (i.e. one image could
> > contain multiple keyboard mappings for multiple platforms).
> > 
> > - Stephen
> 
> 





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