Re: mac vs. linux keybindings

On 02/08/2014 01:53 AM, Paul Davis wrote:
> On Fri, Feb 7, 2014 at 7:36 PM, Jörn Nettingsmeier
> <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
>
>     hi *!
>
>
>     after comparing the mac and linux keybindings one by one, i found
>     that they are equivalent under the following modifier key
>     abstraction (which we have in the CSS of the manual already:
>
>
>     generic linux   mac
>     ---------------------
>     mod1    ctrl    cmd
>     mod2    alt     ctrl
>     mod3    shift   shift
>     mod4    win     ?
>
>
> the modN names should not really have been used in the manual. that was
> sloppy of me. why not? because they are all legitimate X Window modifier
> names too.

oh, they are not user-visible (except for a few incidents which are most 
likely typos). they only existed in the CSS, which replaced them with 
the appropriate key name.

> the "win" thing isn't really keyboard centric, but is a badly thought
> out semantic idea ... a particular modifier (or combination of
> modifiers) that would be used to drive all window-show/hide operations.
> it does NOT corrrespond to the "Windows" key found on so many PC keyboards.

ah. thanks for that clarification. i was wondering: is the win key a 
modifier anyway, or a normal key? or is there no such restriction 
anymore with modern keyboards?

> in reality, it doesn't really work. if you look at the fmt-bindings
> tool, you will see that the "<WINDOW>" modifier or whatever i used as
> the substitution token, is the same as another well-used modifier. so
> the lack of dual bindings is just good luck (with a little bit of care
> thrown in) rather than a matter of design.
>
> we should remove the <WINDOW> thing from the bindings.in
> <http://bindings.in> file and use the *actual* modifier token
> (<PRIMARY>, <SECONDARY> etc) instead, to make collisions between
> bindings obvious.

ok, i'll see if i can find the time to look at bindings.in later this 
week. for now, i will remove all occurrences of the "win" modifier from 
the manual and generate the mac and linux keybindings from the same 
source, on the fly.


-- 
Jörn Nettingsmeier
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