[haiku-development] Re: AltGr Key, key_map, and the US-International Keyboard

  • From: John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Fri, 6 Apr 2012 15:53:22 -0400

On Fri, Apr 6, 2012 at 10:46 AM, Ryan Leavengood <leavengood@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 5, 2012 at 6:47 PM, John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>
>> And notice no AltGr key either, because this is a US keyboard. But, hey, you
>> got left option at least :)
>
> I did not read the very large other thread about this topic, but I
> wanted to give my option nonetheless. I have an Acer Timeline laptop
> that I use for work (with Linux) and it has an AltGr key. I'm American
> and I bought this from an American company. So it is not unheard of
> for US keyboards to have AltGr.

Interesting, I have never seen a US keyboard with an AltGr key on it,
In fact I have been blissfully ignorant of its existence until
recently.

> In Linux it is treated as an Alt key, but I'm sure I could set it up
> as AltGr if I want. For Haiku I don't see why it is such a big deal to
> make AltGr a real (and separate) modifier key. I don't understand why
> you are so against that idea John. It seems the most elegant approach
> to me. We can add that modifier constant, and for international
> keyboard layouts the key which is normally AltGr can be AltGr and work
> how it works on other systems. For the US keyboard layout it can be an
> Alt. Adding the modifier constant for AltGr doesn't have any downside
> that I can see.

The reason that I'm against AltGr as a separate modifier key is that
it solves a problem that we don't have. That is, on Windows and Linux,
there is no way to enter special characters with the keys you have,
so, another key was added, the AltGr key, to support them. On Haiku,
you already have a key for that purpose, Option, in fact you have 2 of
them. So why do we need an AltGr key?

John Scipione

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