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

  • From: Rimas Kudelis <rq@xxxxxx>
  • To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2012 07:49:21 +0300

Hi,

2012.04.02 23:04, John Scipione rašė:
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.

That would indeed be helpful!

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?

The idea was very good. The problem is, I think you used Win/Option and Alt/Command on the wrong side!

Please try to do the following and you'll see:
Make Ctrl act as Cmd
Make Win act as Ctrl
Make Alt act as Opt (ant AltGr as itself)


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 know, these should be localizable.

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".

Yes please!

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.

I was suggesting to use Meta or Super for the Haiku key name instead of Opt. As for the physical key, both Win and ⊞ would do. BTW I don't think it would be trademark infringement to use the Windows orb logo from the keyboard either. To me it looks like fair use.

Rimas

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