[haiku-development] Re: Keymaps and Command key
- From: "Ari Haviv" <arielbhaviv@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: haiku-development@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 18:58:48 -0400
On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 6:04 PM, John Scipione <jscipione@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> This debate goes back to the beginning of computing and is equivalent
> to the debates about the one true line ending \r\n, \n, or \r. People
> familiar with Windows or Linux use ctrl as the default meta key and
> find cmd to be strange and people who are familiar with MacOS or BeOS
> are used to cmd being the default meta key and think that people who
> use ctrl are wierdos. When BeOS moved to the Intel platform they had a
> decision to make, either change the meta key to ctrl or use the
> quasi-equivalent key alt. The Be engineers chose alt and the
> Jean-Louis Gassee made a stink and made the engineers change it to
> ctrl. The engineers balked and created a map so that the default meta
> key could be changed to ctrl but left the default as alt.
>
> This is the situation that we enter. There is no good answer to this
> problem. Unfortunately no matter what gets chosen there are those who
> are going to be left out. I think the most appropriate answer is to
> leave the default as alt (or cmd on Macintosh computers) and allow the
> user to change the default to ctrl if they wish. I don't see how we
> can any do better than the Be engineers on this point.
>
> John Scipione
What's wrong with making control the default and if you want alt, you
can switch to that? Because most future Haiku users will be used to
control as default, learned how to touch type with it and will
complain about it or told to look up a FAQ and that's something to be
minimized.
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