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- Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU
- Path: sparky!uunet!paladin.american.edu!auvm!TROI.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU!SLHI
- X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.3 5/22/91)
- Message-ID: <9211090458.AA17086@troi.cc.rochester.edu>
- Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 23:58:29 -0500
- Sender: Nota Bene List <NOTABENE@TAUNIVM.BITNET>
- From: "Sarah L. Higley" <slhi@TROI.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU>
- Subject: Hazarding the Customs
- Comments: To: Nota Bene List <NOTABENE@taunivm.tau.ac.il>
- Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene
- Lines: 60
-
- Well, I've been there and back. Nothing like some healthy experimentation.
- The x/ switch does work, and I was able to move my editing commands from
- the arrow/number keys to the control-alphanumeric keyboard, but I would
- warn anyone trying to do the same that there are some not so obvious pitfalls.
- I'm still trying to straighten them out. Perhaps someone could give me some
- much needed advice.
-
- The delicate thing is that I am moving functions that ask for alternate
- keyboards (like ov,l,r; ov,l,c etc.) to the arrow keys and this has proved
- somewhat treacherous. For one thing, these keys are not really recognized
- in the unshifted table, so that while hitting PgUp now gives me the beautiful
- Greek keyboard, once in Greek, hitting 7,Home does not restore me to English.
- The keyboard in Greek will recognize the edit commands now transferred to
- ctrl e,f,d, etc., but not the commands in the unshifted (what do you call it?
- the default?) keyboard for the arrow/number keys, so you're stuck. What I
- did try, for I was expecting this difficulty-- you look at the nblingua.kbd
- layout and you see that the arrow/number keys all have duplicate commands in
- their default states-- was to go in and change each 7,Home key for Slavic,
- Greek and Hebrew to ov,r,l, but this was a dismal failure and confused my
- keyboard so thoroughly that F9 seemed to think it was a block delete.
- Scrapped that-- reloaded my keyboard and this time redesignated ctrl [ as
- ov,r,l-- and VOILA, it worked. I thought I was home free. Here is what
- I didn't foresee: in redesignating the command functions on the number/arrow
- keys, I seem to have blocked the smooth operation of the F1 help windows.
- I flip into Help and try to push the menus down the line with the remaining
- gray arrow keys-- you know, the ones between your enter key and the arrow/
- number keys-- and they beep, shudder and freeze. Essentially, they won't
- budge. They take their commands, somehow, from the functions assigned to
- the arrow/number keys. Why they won't respond to the gray arrow keys is
- what I am asking you experts. Nor will they respond, of course, to my
- new directional keys, ctrl d and ctrl s.
-
- Sigh. It looks as though trying to strip the arrow/number keys of their
- original functions was a mistake. I may have to find room on the ctrl
- alphanumeric for about twelve displaced control keys. With all this
- reduplication of key functions, this is exasperating. I have the gray
- arrow keys which do the same as the arrow/number keys. But they aren't
- the same, obviously, to the help program. The help program can't find
- it's path to my reconfigured directional keys in control mode, but I can't
- figure out why the gray keys won't work.
-
- I will probably have to resituate all the functions I moved to the arrow/
- numbers to places on the control alphanumeric-- I said that; I'm repeating
- myself in my fatigue, here--; I've noticed what looks like some redundancy
- in some of the commands. Ctrl P and Ctrl M do exactly the same thing, it
- seems, as Ctrl Gray +, although they are configured differently. Can I
- remove some of these commands if they are indeed redundant? Those of you
- who know the keyfunctions well; what keys can I get rid of? Ctrl Y and
- Ctrl D both seem to delete blocks. Control Z (44=ov,r,g) doesn't seem to
- do a thing. Didn't someone ask about this command earlier? Can I delete
- it? What is it supposed to do and why isn't it doing it? I think there
- are enough semi-colons making room for me, but barely. I might have to
- make some tough decisions, here, but I wouldn't want to end up disabling
- something else further down the line, and not knowing what it is I had
- done.
-
- Thanks in advance. I believe, that if this gets all its parts
- put into strategic places, it can be pure MAGIC.
-
- Sarah Higley
-