[PD] Mac OS X, ALT-Shortcuts, dollarsign on Finnish keyboards?

Mathieu Bouchard matju at sympatico.ca
Wed Dec 8 07:37:32 CET 2004


On Tue, 7 Dec 2004, Miller Puckette wrote:

> Well, my PC keyboard has only one "alt" (which, in linux, does not seem
> to bring up extra characters)... 

I think that qualifies you to park in the handicapped space... at least in
Canada anyway...

> and I think the Macintosh is the same.

My impression is that the naming is different. The Windows Alt is
apparently equivalent to the MacOS Command, whereas the Windows AltGr is
the equivalent of the MacOS Alt.

Linux does it the same, except that there may be a difference between the
Alt key and the Meta key. (here I map Meta to the "Windows" keys)

> Also, I think it's against all the Macintosh rules to use "alt" for
> a key accelerator anyway.

Just like it's against all the Windows rules (written or not) to do so
with "AltGr".

> I don't know in Windows what Alt keys do, but I think there too they
> select alternate characters.

They select menus. The alternate characters are handled by AltGr.

> If this is true, it's probably best to stop using "alt" accelerators,
> at least on Mac and Windows, although perhaps they could stay as they
> are on linux.

I'd rather have Alt mean the same as in Windows/KDE/GNOME. Not so much by
consistency with popular systems, than because I'm sure a lot of Pd users
would looove more keyboard shortcuts in general.

> I think I have to just find "control" keys for making GUIs...

I say, try Control+Shift. It's easy to type, just stick your finger
vertically between the two keys, and it presses both at once, and the rest
of the hand is just as well-positioned as in the Ctrl-only case.

But I think I'd rather have user-definable accelerators and such. (It's
been on my TODO list for too long).

_____________________________________________________________________
Mathieu Bouchard -=- Montréal QC Canada -=- http://artengine.ca/matju





More information about the Pd-list mailing list