*BSD News Article 18877


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Xref: sserve comp.windows.x.i386unix:2704 comp.os.386bsd.bugs:1191
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x.i386unix,comp.os.386bsd.bugs
Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!metro!news
From: dawes@physics.su.OZ.AU (David Dawes)
Subject: Re: [HACK:] fix CAPSLOCK for good...
Message-ID: <1993Jul27.042042.11223@ucc.su.OZ.AU>
Followup-To: comp.windows.x.i386unix
Keywords: netbsd, 386bsd, hack, capslock
Sender: news@ucc.su.OZ.AU
Nntp-Posting-Host: physics.su.oz.au
Organization: School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia
References: <22uoji$h3d@introl.introl.com> <1993Jul26.033520.19423@ucc.su.oz.au> <230oil$os1@introl.introl.com>
Date: Tue, 27 Jul 1993 04:20:42 GMT
Lines: 45

In article <230oil$os1@introl.introl.com> tim@introl.com (Tim Chase) writes:
>In article <1993Jul26.033520.19423@ucc.su.oz.au> dawes@physics.su.OZ.AU (David Dawes) writes:
>>
>>Are you sure you are doing the remapping correctly?  I've never had any
>>problems swapping ctrl and caps-lock with XFree86.  If you follow the
>>example in the xmodmap(1) man page it should work fine.  If you don't do
>>it correctly you can see the behaviour you describe.
>
>Wow, you're right.  Actually, I wasn't forgetting to undefine the old definition.
>I have been using the .Xmodmap file containing:
>
>        remove lock = Caps_Lock
>        add control = Caps_Lock
>  
>to turn my caps-lock key into a control key.  This file works for every X
>server I've tried except for the XFree86 server.  The magic seems to be
>that the XFree86 server applies the locking behavior to whetever key
>has the "Caps_Lock" keysym.  Now that I realize this, I still think it
>is bogus behavior of the server to think that whatever key has the "Caps_Lock"
>keysym should lock.  Instead, it seems that it ought to lock whatever
>key is used to achieve the "lock" modifier (at least that's the way that
>the stock MIT server on Suns and all Visual and NCD X servers work).

I'm not sure about that -- I wonder if Thomas Roell would like to
comment since the code handling this is his.

That aside, the keysyms are often still important.  One example is the
different way Caps_Lock and Shift_Lock are treated?  Both keys would be
set as lock modifiers, but the actual behaviour depends on the keysym.
Also many clients depend on the control key having a keysym Control_L
or Control_R.  Another example is the way the translation manager
works.  Meta and Alt for example correspond to keysyms rather than
modifiers.  I'm no expert on this, but I think that Shift and Ctrl do
too.

They only way to truly interchange the control and caps lock keys is
as per the example in the xmodmap(1) man page -- why else would they
do it that way?

David
--
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 David Dawes <dawes@physics.su.oz.au>    DoD#210      | Phone: +61 2 692 2639
 School of Physics, University of Sydney, Australia   | Fax:   +61 2 660 2903
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