Configuring the Keyboard ?

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2004 at 10:53:48AM -0500, Lance F. Squire wrote:
> Francois Ouellette wrote:
> >
> >Conclusion: if it ain't broken, don't try to fix it!
> 
> Ah, but it is broken.
> 
> Personal pet peeve: The Num Lock key
> 
> This key exists because the original IBM PC (Pre TX/AT) had no arrow 
> keys and cluster of 6 above them. So there function was overlyed on the 
> numeric pad.
> 
> The XT/AT keyboards kept this key for backward campatability to original 
> PC software (And users, I'm sure)
> 
> However, Today it serves no purpose that I know of, except to have the 
> number pad in the WRONG mode everytime I try to use it. (Type...&^% 
> wrong mode [Num Lock] Type)

So set your system to enable numlock by default when you boot/login, and
map the number lock keyt to do something else or nothing.  Feel free.
It's not that hard to do.

I believe in X you can use the shift+numlock key to enable cursor key
control of the mouse.  / select left button, * middle button, - right
button, 5 clicks the selected button, 0 clicks and holds the selected
button.  cursor keys on number move the mouse pointer.

> My Ideal keyboard would have the IBM AT/(PS/2) layout (No Windows Keys), 
> Minus the Num Lock (No un-num-lock function), Print Screen/SysRq, Scroll 
> Lock and Pause/Break keys.

I use the Windows keys as meta (so I can use alt for other things) and
as left and right amiga keys in UAE.  Menu key makes a great compose
key.

> Of course, if there are people who use those last three keys regularily, 
> I'd like to know what for? I haven't touched them in years!

Scroll lock pauses the screen in linux just as it was always meant to
do.

alt+SysRq allows chaging LOG levels and force sync and various things in
Linux.  puase was great for pausing the screen in dos.  break is very
useful on serial consoles on real servers.

As for numlock, some people don't like the inverted T and prefer the
2468 positions for the arrows, and for some games having the arrows with
home/end/pgup/down as diagonals for movement was rather nice.  Sure you
could just map the number keys to do that too, but maybe numbers have a
better purpose (although anything using scancodes shouldn't care what
the meaning of the key is of course).

Lennart Sorensen
--
The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://tlug.ss.org
TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://tlug.ss.org/subscribe.shtml