Re: ALT as a click modifier

[Sebastian Reitenbach]

On Thursday, July 25, 2013 13:31 CEST, Wolfgang Lux <wolfgang.lux@gmail.com> 
wrote: 
 
> Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> 
> > Hi,
> > 
> > I got soo many suggestions, that I am confused ;)
> 
> okay, I'm going to stick my head out, though I guess I'm not that much 
> qualified to answer for I'm using only Apple keyboards for a long time.
> 
> > Riccardo
> > 
> > Riccardo Mottola wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >> after William's advice, I changed Graphos mouse-event key-modifier for 
> >> certain operations to Alternate, to be more similar to other applications.
> >> 
> >> Graphos handles three different modifiers: shift, control, alt (method 
> >> below).
> >> 
> >> Originally "alt" was mapped to NSCommandKeyMask. This would usually work 
> >> fine on GNUstep with the standard setup, but on Mac you needed "command", 
> >> as it is obvious. Now I set it to Alternate and it works like a charm on 
> >> Mac, but not on GNUstep: there is no key combination that returns Alt.
> >> I fear this is a similar problem as the one with alt as key-modifier for 
> >> Emacs that Fred had.
> >> 
> >> I tried to remap keys using SystemPreferences, so that "command" becomes 
> >> the WindowKey, thus I could map Alternate to Meta. That way, it works on 
> >> GNUstep too, essentially it behaves like on Mac. However, The windows key 
> >> is not always available, people usually run with the standard setup.
> 
> So, how many keyboards are out there without a Windows or other extra key? PC 
> keyboards come along with a Windows key for quite sometime now.

My main keyboard, since many years, is a good old IBM 1391402, from 1989-11-24 
;)
>From the date, you may guess there are no Windows keys on it, and I'm not gonna
going to change that keyboard soon ;)

So if the key combination is not customizable, then with such a keyboard, I may
be in trouble. 

but that's just a personal rant, don't take it too serious ;)

So maybe the fifths option from below, might help here.

Btw: my SGI Indigo also doesn't have a Windows key on its keyboard.
But I have to admit, I haven't tried to get GNUstep running there yet ;)

cheers,
Sebastian


> 
> >> What options do I have?
> >> 
> >> 1) #ifdef in the code for GNUstep and Mac. Horrible, but quick and works
> >> 2) Introduce preferences in graphos where the behaviour is customizable. 
> >> This would be an advanced version of 1)
> >> 3) interpret both Command and Alternate as altClick. Looks dirty to me and 
> >> probably would not work if on GS command gets mapped to control
> >> 4) change GS's gehaviour to issue "alt" if alt gets clicked and in case 
> >> command is alt, both alt and command are returned as modifier (is this 
> >> even possible?)
> >> 5) ...? what other option
> 
> OpenStep used to map the Alt key to Command and AltGr to the Alt key on 
> traditional PC keyboards (without a Windows key). This should work for 
> GNUstep, too. So I think the 5th option, which you should choose, would be 
> doing nothing at all. Except possibly checking whether the default mapping 
> for our modifier keys is reasonable.
> 
> Wolfgang
> 
> 
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