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

  • From: John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2012 16:04:43 -0400

On Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:36 PM, Rimas Kudelis <rq@xxxxxx> wrote:
> By the way, can you please make it more obvious which side of that dialog
> refers to the physical keys and which one to their functions in Haiku?
> Whenever I go to that dialog, I become confused. I noticed that someone
> added "Opt/Win" and "Cmd/Alt" titles instead of just Opt and Cmd, but funny
> thing is that they are added to the wrong side (the one with mapping, not
> keys), which increased my confusion exponentially. :)

I could add a header to each column showing that the mapping goes from
the "Key Label" in the left-hand column and the "Key Role" in the
right-hand column. As far as the names of the key labels used in the
left-hand column, that is an open question which I am still struggling
with.

I initially chose "Control", "Option", and "Command" to make a direct
connection with the roles, but people were confused. So I changed
"Option" to "Win/Option" and "Command" to "Alt/Command" but you are
still confused. So what can I do? Since the labels are going to depend
on what is on printed your keyboard I can't win. For instance German
keyboards don't have a key labelled "Ctrl" instead they are labeled
"Strg", short for Steuerung, the German word for Control.

I suppose I could go with "Ctrl", "Win", "Alt" and then also add a
hint to translators that indicates that they should translate the text
into what is printed on their keyboard for the corresponding key.
Since the German translator will most-likely have a German keyboard he
or she should translate "Ctrl" into "Strg".

As far as "Win" goes there is a bit of conflict there since the
Windows key has a Windows logo on it most of the time and no other
text which makes it is tough to represent textually. Also the Haiku
dev's have expressed that they really don't want to see the Windows
logo on Haiku plus there are most likely trademark infringement
problems using that symbol anyway.

Some have suggested using something generic instead such as "Meta",
but I am opposed to that kind of thinking since the generic word will
not appear on most any keyboard and therefore is as good as "Opt".
Then again, neither is "Win" printed on most keyboards so that doesn't
work.

An idea I had recently is to use a unicode symbol that resembles a
window without infringing upon Microsoft's trademark. Wikipedia for
instance uses this symbol: ⊞ to represent the Windows key. That is a
fair compromise between recognizability and legality IMHO.

John Scipione

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