On 15/12/19 6:02 PM, Jakob Reschke wrote:
> Did I get that wrong or are you really suggesting to make Ctrl 
> unavailable as a modifier inside of Squeak?
> 
> Many "normal" applications map Ctrl combinations. Most do so before they 
> begin to map Alt. At least on Windows and Linux. Ctrl to them is what 
> Cmd is to Mac, that's how I observed it.

Yes. My strawman proposal is to simplify code (VM and Image) through 
separation of concerns and eliminate confusion across platforms. I don't 
expect it to affect Squeak keyboard habits much [1]

VM input plugins will use modifiers like CTRL, SHIFT, CAPLOCK to decode 
key presses and pass a "soft" keycode to the Image. For instance, when 
you press Ctrl+C, the VM will decode this into 16r03 and pass it to the 
Image. The Image will treat this as a "copy" command.Within the image, 
non-printable codes will map directly to commands like cut (ctrl-x), 
copy (ctrl-c), paste (ctrl-v), print (ctrl-p), open (ctrl-o), save 
(ctrl-s), close (ctrl-w), quit (ctrl-q). ALT modifier is used to 
interpret printable keys as commands like doit (alt-d), browse (alt-b) etc.

[1] Platforms often use modifier combinations to bypass apps, enter 
accented characters or Unicode. Eg. CTRL+ALT on Linux, CMD+Option on 
Mac) bypass applications and send commands directly to boot, host os or 
the window manager. Other combinations like CTRL+SHIFT (Linux) or Option 
(Mac) or ALT+Numeric+ (Windows) are used to enter any 4-nibble Unicode. 
The Image should not have to deal with such low level detail. Let VM 
input plugins handle these escapes gracefully.

Regards .. Subbu