Subject: Alt-Insert (was Re: keyboard input of arbitrary characters)
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Fri Apr 27 2001 - 15:35:56 CDT
At 08:59 AM 4/27/01 +0200, Mike Nordell wrote:
>> 2. What should the magic trigger be? I happened to pick Ctrl-Esc out
>> of thin air.
>
>No good. The only free qualified <something>+Esc I know of in Windows would
>be Shift-Esc. All other combinations of qualifiers + Escape are used
>(Ctrl-Alt-Esc and Shift-Ctrl-Alt-Esc apparently does the same thing as
>Alt-Esc and Shift-Alt-Esc, probably because some PC keyboards can't handle
>more than three keys down simultaneous).
OK. Ctrl-Esc is out, then. I didn't think it would be that easy, but I
wanted to get the discussion started. :-)
>Many of the function keys also have default meanings... But, what about
>Alt-Insert? That even has some kind of correct semantics.
On balance, I think I like this idea. Before we consider going forward with
it, though, a few issues to consider:
1. Does anyone know of any conflicting usage of Alt-Insert?
2. Does anyone know of keyboards which are missing one or both keys?
AFAIK, we already have at least some alt bindings, so I'd hope not, but for
all the typing I still do on Mac keyboards (for example), it's been a long
while since I actually *looked* at what my fingers were doing there.
3. Is it physically comfortable enough? On both of the keyboards in front
of me, I can easily do the Alt-Ins chord one-handed, but I have big hands.
4. This way we still have a single chord to start the mode, and can then
just type single characters for the rest. I'd guess that this would make it
easier to type one-handed, but I'm no accessibility expert.
5. As with #4, the one chord followed by "naked" keys approach might be
easier to implement inside the existing keybinding mechanism, but I haven't
given it much thought.
6. It's not the ISO Ctrl-Shift continuous chording alternative being
discussed elsewhere in this thread.
Anything I overlooked?
Paul
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