🚀 go-pugleaf

The fact is that NeXT has a portable interface for the keyboard, and the  
programmers at the corporations that are having problems with the keyboard just  
didn't read the documentation.

(from event.h:)

    struct {    /* For key-down and key-up events */
        short   reserved;
        short   repeat;         /* for key-down: nonzero if really a repeat */
        unsigned short charSet; /* character set code */
        unsigned short charCode;/* character code in that set */
        unsigned short keyCode; /* device-dependent key number */
        short      keyData;     /* device-dependent info */
    } key;

If you used key.charSet and key.charCode, you win.
If you used key.keyCode and key.keyData, you lose.

Its just that simple.  WordPerfect did it wrong.  Co-eXist did it wrong.   
Executor did it wrong, but then they fixed it (an easy fix). SBook 2.0 did it  
wrong, but SBook 2.05 does it right.


In article <1992Oct26.221617.7372@wdl.loral.com> mdm@wdl1.wdl.loral.com (Mike D  
Marchionna) writes:
> The fact is NeXT really blew it when it came to designing a protable software
> interface to the keyboard.  This is one instance when NeXT should have taken
> a tip from the X11 environment.  YES THAT'S WHAT I SAID.  The X window
> environment runs on zillion different keyboards without a hitch.  And if
> there is a problem you can remap the keyboard easily and effectively.  The
> secret is to provide a symbolic name for every key you find on all the  
various
> keyboards in the world today.  Keycodes can then be mapped to return
> specific key symbols.  The programmer translates a keypress event in a
> completely portable way by doing a XKeycodeToKeysym() call.  The returned key
> symbol can then be used to decide what the key press actually means.  For
> example if I want to know if the Up Arrow key was pressed I simply compare 
> translate the keycode to a KeySym and then check if the KeySym = "Up".  This  
is
> completely portable.  NeXT simply never anticipated that NeXTSTEP would
> ever run on hardware with anything but the original keyboard.  If you
> want to understand how X solved this problem read the xmodmap and xev
> man pages on any NeXT machine.  Hey I don't like X either, but this one
> problem the X community dealt with better then NeXTSTEP.
> 
> Write it off to NeXTSTEP development arrogance.
> 

Write it off to not reading the documentation.
-- 

................................................................simson