Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!benson
From: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: NumLock and similar keys
Message-ID: <1989Sep13.165930.15346@odi.com>
Date: 13 Sep 89 16:59:30 GMT
References: <8909122249.AA22882@Larry.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Reply-To: benson@odi.com (Benson I. Margulies)
Organization: Object Design Inc., Burlington, MA
Lines: 37

This discussion seems to me to boil down to perhaps 2 questions.

1- Should there be a convention for a Num modifier.

2- where do lock keys come from.

1 has been answered in the sense that the consortium considers
it a prima facia plausible idea and might act on it. I have a 
few comments on 2.

The current Xlib/server permits me to define any old key to be a
modifier key. Provision is only made for one modifier lock, though --
the one-and-only shift lock.  except that lock isn't, from the point
of view of lookupstring, a modifier lock. its just a modifier.  It is
distinct from Shift pretty much only in that it shifts less
characters. So far, I'm just recapitulating my own education.

However, most users expect to find a press-to-start,press-to-stop
behavior from their shift lock keys. thus the sun server.

Note, though, that the Sun server code isn't really Sun-specific. It's
perfectly happy to turn any old key into a locking key.

This suggests that locking (press to start, press to stop) modifiers
are a generally useful feature. they are pretty essential to people
with some handicaps, for example. So I find myself suggesting that
just as I can xmodmap any old key to be Shift, I should further be
able to specify that this mapping should have
press-to-start/press-to-stop behavior. 

The conceptual problem here is that clients are free to ignore
mappings, but its somew hat difficult to see how this feature could
have the same property.


-- 
Benson I. Margulies