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

  • From: Oliver Tappe <zooey@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2012 12:37:58 +0200

On 2012-03-31 at 19:03:41 [+0200], John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> 
wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 11:58 AM, Joseph Groover <looncraz@xxxxxxxxxxx> 
> wrote:
> > I would just like to say that my #1 dislike in Haiku is that my left and
> > right Alt-keys are treated differently.
> >
> > They both say 'Alt' and so they should do the same thing....  illogical 
> > any
> > other way you look at it.
> 
> I don't understand, at the current moment they do for the most part.
> This is about AltGr which is not labelled the same and does not do the
> same thing, but is for international keyboards only.

The point is that "AltGr" on international keyboards is the same key as the 
right "Alt" on US keyboards, just with a different label - the scancode is 
always the same. 

We currently map the right Alt key (no matter the label) to the OPTION 
role, while on BeOS it was mapped to COMMAND. That's why on BeOS there were 
two COMMAND keys, but on Haiku there's only one. 
This is unavoidable for international keyboards (the ones with AltGr), as  
corresponding keymaps should map the right Alt key (i.e. "AltGr") to the 
ALTGR role. But for keymaps that don't have AltGr, we could do better and 
map the right Alt key to COMMAND, too.

Of course this still leaves AltGr-keymaps with just a single command key. 
People that are bothered by that can switch over to Windows/Linux mode, 
which will then give them two COMMAND keys, one CTRL key and one ALTGR key.

Concerning the use of OPTION: I'm all for leaving it free for system 
shortcuts, the ALTGR & SHIFT-ALTGR layers should be enough to get access to 
all the fancy characters.

cheers,
        Oliver

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