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