shift-cmd keys [BUG][FIX]

Norton, Chris chrisn at Kronos.com
Mon Feb 22 20:13:57 UTC 1999


Hi Folks.

Since I have access to a PC (and not to a Mac, UNIX box, Acorn or to some
other interesting platform), I have also struggled somewhat with the key
configuration.  I miss my delete key!

I'm basically a Squeak newbie, but I'm gaining ground every day.  So rather
than volunteer at this point to design and implement a solution to this
problem, I'll politely ask if anyone has considered creating a Squeak
"preferences" file that could be configured and would not be overwritten
whenever we download the latest & greatest versions of Squeak.  Thus, if the
(programmable?) keyboard issue is resolved, we could configure our systems &
save such configuration info into our preferences file.

I have already overwritten my preferences settings several times and it is a
bit inconvenient to have to go back and reload my chosen color settings,
author initials, font selections, etc..

Just an idea.  :-)

---==> Chris

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Tim Rowledge [SMTP:rowledge at interval.com]
> Sent:	Saturday, February 20, 1999 12:27 PM
> To:	Squeak mailinglist
> Subject:	Re: shift-cmd keys [BUG][FIX]
> 
> On Fri 19 Feb, William O. Dargel wrote:
> 
> > This all seems to point out the need for a more general overhaul of how
> keys get mappe
> > d to
> > commands. We should be able to handle all the platforms _and_ user
> preferences for key
> > mappings by at most plugging in a new (or modifying the current) table
> of key-bindings
> > . And
> > it would of course want to interface cleanly with getting events from
> the OS rather th
> > an the
> > current polling method, and be dynamically reconfigurable ala menu
> accelerator keys as
> >  your
> > context changes, and...  But perhaps I digress.
> 
> I thought it would probably be something like that which caused your
> changes. Yes, you're right, key input needs an overhaul to be more
> platform
> portable. At the moment, everyone except Mac has complicated code to
> translate from native to 'best I can work out what is needed to match'.
> 
> An idea Eliot came up with a _long_ time ago was to pass in the raw native
> key values and have a small hierarchy of SystemDescription classes that
> had
> nice intelligable code to translate to Smalltalk events. It had the big
> advantage that no VM fixing was needed, that new keymappings could be
> added
> and so on. IIRC the classes also encapsulated which file related classes
> needed to be active, how external calls where done etc. Very useful.
> 
> Now if you mix that with the startup file idea where a file is looked for
> and if found, filed in to do some startup work, we could simply have
> platform specific files with the SystemDescription (and maybe even
> personal
> preference settings?). And it should probably be binary streamed through
> FrootLoop :-)
> 
> tim
> 
> -- 
> Useful random insult:- A prime candidate for natural deselection.
> Tim Rowledge:  rowledge at interval.com (w)  +1 (650) 842-6110 (w)
>  tim at sumeru.stanford.edu (h)  <http://sumeru.stanford.edu/tim>





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