OT: You OS/X Users...question for ya...

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Bill Campbell" <bill at celestial.com>
To: <filepro-list at lists.celestial.com>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 3:38 PM
Subject: Re: OT: You OS/X Users...question for ya...


> On Wed, Feb 28, 2007, Brian K. White wrote:
>>>>I prefer one PuTTY session hooked to a linux system running screen.
>>>>Wireless dies temporarily, I'm safe and can recover.  The lack of a
>>>>gazillion individual windows for emulators is for my terminal emulator
>>>>experience what tabbed browsing is for my browser experience.
>>>
>>> One session doesn't do me much good when I'm connecting to a
>>> dozen or more systems.  Putty doesn't do me much good as I don't
>>> have any Windows systems and ssh with xterms does everything I
>>> need quite nicely.  My normal e-mail reader is mutt in xterms.
>>
>>How do you use the F4 F10 etc... keys on an apple laptop?
>>Last time I tried to set a client up with a terminal emulator (Ericomm?) 
>>to
>>access their filepro app, I could not free up all of the F keys for the
>>terminal emulator app (or any app, including the stock terminal.app). The 
>>OS
>>retained control of a few keys for changing backlight brightness and sound
>>volume and such, even after I found a dialog somewhere (in the os or 
>>window
>>manager) that freed up most keys by changing an option.
>
> I generally don't use function keys greater than F5 although I had one
> FilePro customer running long-orphaned x286 code around FP where they not
> only used high function keys, they assumed the terminal was a Radio Shack
> DT-100 and reprogrammed them on the fly.  Getting this working with Apple
> xterms was kinda fun, but that's another story.
>
> In order to allow their application to use these high keys, I had to go
> into the System Preferences Dashboard and Expose configuration to remap or
> disable the keys they use.
>
> Using the function keys on the Apple laptops requires holding down the FN
> key at the bottom left of the keyboard -- hardly an ideal situation. 
> There
> might be a way to reverse the functionallity so that they function keys 
> did
> the right thing normally, and the Apple functions only when the FN key is
> down.

Aha. I did not know that. And now that provides a possible lead to follow.

Some Microsoft keyboards and a few other keyboards started shipping since a 
few years ago with F keys that sent alternative keycodes by default, and you 
have to press a little Fn key to make an F key send the normal key code. In 
the case of these Microsoft keyboards on Windows, there is a couple 
different forms of hack you can do to cause the behavior to reverse at boot 
or sometime during startup. In this case one of the ways is to run a small 
app during startup, which sends some commands to the keyboards internal 
controller that swaps the default behaviour until the keyboard loses power 
or receives a counteracting command. This fixes pretty much any program 
since it adjusts the keyboard itself.
I think another was a registry tweak that reverses the meanings of the 
keycodes in windows, which only fixes windows.
Also you didn't have to hold the Fn key like a shift key each time either. 
Even without doing anything to fix the keyboard, you'd still just have to 
press the Fn key once per restart, or any time you pressed it accidentally. 
It acted as a toggle between modes like caplock/numlock.

Maybe there is something like that that can be done to a mac book that I 
never thought to even look for that kind of answer.


> What I would really like is an Apple laptop with a ThinkPad keyboard and
> eraser mouse.

As a track-pad liker and eraser-point hater (ok hate is way too strong a 
word for something like this) My number one, and damned near _only_ wish for 
any kind of change on a mac book is the only-one-mouse button. Some laptops 
are starting to put a little constellation around the pad to try to provide 
all the same buttons as a 7 or 9 button mouse complete with 
tilt-scroll-wheel-button and thumb buttons etc... and I agree completely 
with that trend. That magnetic power connector and the overall design of the 
whole unit, and the fact that at least some of the time you can use a 
bluetooth mouse with the built-in bluetooth, are almost enough to make up 
for the missing pointer controls. Almost.

Brian K. White  --  brian at aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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