Making use of the "windows"-keys

Making use of the "windows"-keys

[fugundrecht]

Hi there

due to ergonomic reasons I want to use the "windows"-keys for ctrl,
they are so more conviently accesible with the thumbs.
Unfortunately I have no programming skill whatsoever and would
therefore appreciate any idea how to get this done.

Greetings
Norbert

Re: Making use of the "windows"-keys

[B. T. Raven]

<fugundrecht@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1140888768.633586.73110@t39g2000cwt.googlegroups.com...
> Hi there
>
> due to ergonomic reasons I want to use the "windows"-keys for ctrl,
> they are so more conviently accesible with the thumbs.
> Unfortunately I have no programming skill whatsoever and would
> therefore appreciate any idea how to get this done.
>
> Greetings
> Norbert
>

I think this is an operating system question. For Linux, etc. see:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/Keyboard-and-Console-HOWTO.html#ss5.1
3

For win2000 or more, google on Registry and keyboard key swap, etc.

For win98 or less it's almost impossible without something that works like
this:

http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/Ctrl2Cap9x.html

To modify this for your purposes would require a lot of knowledge of msw
and assembly language.

I want to do something similar on win98: Swap the winapps key and the
right control key to make the dvorak keyboard symetrical. Any one know how
to do that?

As far as I know, Emacs capabilities for msw os's along these lines are
limited to these forms, which I find in my .emacs:

(setq w32-pass-lwindow-to-system nil
      w32-pass-rwindow-to-system nil
      w32-pass-apps-to-system    nil
      w32-lwindow-modifier       'super   ;; Left Windows
      w32-rwindow-modifier       'super   ;; Right Windows
      w32-apps-modifier          'hyper)  ;; App-Menu (key to right of
Right Windows)


So it looks like you could at least (if you are using msw) substitute
'control where I have 'super.  This would leave you with 2 left control
keys and 2 rights.


By the way, I can't get my thumbs closer to those keys unless I cross my
hands. Are you using a special keyboard?

Ed

Re: Making use of the "windows"-keys

[fugundrecht]

@ B.T.Raven:

Thanks a big lot for your suggestion; this looks just like the right
thing.

B. T. Raven wrote:
> By the way, I can't get my thumbs closer to those keys unless I cross my
> hands. Are you using a special keyboard?
>
> Ed

Hehe, no, only a special touchtyping-system, that allows me a quite
natural hand-posture while typing. Well, actually, it's not that
special at all - just a slightly modified standard-scheme; e.g.
accessing the c-key (not CTRL, the letter C) with the forefinger
instead of the middlefinger and so on.
This way, my hands form an A over the keyboard by default; the only
backside is the wide stretch of the small fingers to acces the
CTRL-keys, which was no problem at all 'til I got rather fed up with
"word processors" and found myself hooked up with the emacs.

Well, thanks to you, it seems I can now start making full advantage of
it. :-))

Re: Making use of the "windows"-keys

[B. T. Raven]

<fugundrecht@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1141044175.689223.322930@v46g2000cwv.googlegroups.com...
> @ B.T.Raven:
>
> Thanks a big lot for your suggestion; this looks just like the right
> thing.
>
> B. T. Raven wrote:
> > By the way, I can't get my thumbs closer to those keys unless I cross
my
> > hands. Are you using a special keyboard?
> >
> > Ed
>
> Hehe, no, only a special touchtyping-system, that allows me a quite
> natural hand-posture while typing. Well, actually, it's not that
> special at all - just a slightly modified standard-scheme; e.g.
> accessing the c-key (not CTRL, the letter C) with the forefinger
> instead of the middlefinger and so on.
> This way, my hands form an A over the keyboard by default; the only
> backside is the wide stretch of the small fingers to acces the
> CTRL-keys, which was no problem at all 'til I got rather fed up with
> "word processors" and found myself hooked up with the emacs.
>
> Well, thanks to you, it seems I can now start making full advantage of
> it. :-))
>

But you do have 4 control keys now don't you? (msw os?) This seems like
something of a waste of precious keyboard real-estate to me. Of course the
one true keyboard would be based on the Symbolics layout but this is more
important for progammers than for us generic writer types. After I learn
more about keymaps, I would like to make Ctrl h, t, n, bound to back,
transpose, forward char, since I use a Dvorak layout. (Actually, C-t is
already transpose-char.

Re: Making use of the "windows"-keys

[fugundrecht]

B. T. Raven schrieb:
>This seems like
> something of a waste of precious keyboard real-estate to me.

Not for a long time, I think. ;-)

I'm teaching myself Texinfo now, this was the reason for switsching to
Emacs to start with.
I'm aiming for collecting and sorting my ideas about certain issues by
making use of hypertext-principles, and gradually structurize them as
they densify.

Actually I'm used to do this the HTML-way, using the MS-Office tools.
But you can only go so far, this way; inevitably you end up messing
things up while trying to sort them out. Working directly with
HTML-code is no alternative; the mere look of it gives me downright the
willies.
The Texinfo-code is so much more clean and beautiful than anything else
I've ever seen; I don't think that I have no need for additional
command-keys once I am getting aware of the full capabilities of it.

Re: Making use of the "windows"-keys

[fugundrecht]

B. T. Raven schrieb:

>This seems like
> something of a waste of precious keyboard real-estate to me.

Not for a long time, I think. ;-)

I'm teaching myself Texinfo now, this was the reason for switching to
Emacs to start with.
I'm aiming for collecting and sorting my ideas about certain issues by
making use of hypertext-principles, and gradually structurize them as
they densify.

Actually I'm used to do this the HTML-way, using the MS-Office tools.
But you can only go so far, this way; inevitably you end up messing
things up while trying to sort them out. Working directly with
HTML-code is no alternative; the mere look of it gives me downright the
willies.
The Texinfo-code is so much more clean and beautiful than anything else
I've ever seen; I don't think that I have no need for additional
command-keys once I am getting aware of the full capabilities of it.

Re: Making use of the "windows"-keys

[Peter Lee]

>>>> fugundrecht  writes:

    > due to ergonomic reasons I want to use the "windows"-keys for ctrl,
    > they are so more conviently accesible with the thumbs.
    > Unfortunately I have no programming skill whatsoever and would
    > therefore appreciate any idea how to get this done.

If you search around you can find an app called TradeKeys (from pcmag I think)
that does this.  That's what I used on windows to swap those keys and make
"windows" act like ctrl.

On linux there's a similar utility (I forget the name... maybe xmodmap?) for
switching those bindings at the os level.