Re: round 2

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "Peter" == Peter Evans <peter@example.com> writes:

    Peter> Well, that's put me on the right track.

Ah, sorry, you pleaded subtlety-impairment earlier, didn't you?

I didn't really expect anybody to take that rant seriously, except the
other members of The Cabal.  Preachers and choirs, you know.  The
point was to emphasize the Ultimate Excellence of XKeyCaps.

    Peter> But I plead guilty to the misdemeanor of posting piccies on
    Peter> my web pages, and I don't think Lynx would be too good at
    Peter> rendering them.

Multimedia has nothing to do with GUI, except for making it possible.
Of course you need X or some other graphical windowing system.  But
GUI is about _input_, not about _display_.  You know, "point-and-oh-
shit" interfaces.

    Peter> using Microsoft Windows!  [collapses in embarrassment]

Now, now.  At least Microsoft has spent billions of dollars making the
interface suck consistently.  And applied hundreds of billions of
dollars of pressure to complementors to force them to provide drivers
that mostly work, etc.  (In the long run these are BadThangs[tm] IMO.
But the Windows GUI is probably the best of a bad lot at this point.)

    Peter> One way or another, I need a GUI, no?

No.  All the apps you mention provide keyboard shortcuts.  I've used
all of them on mouseless systems.

> But then there's
>			       XKeyCaps

Jamie sez:

    >> If you're using a keyboard not on this list and would like to
    >> make xkeycaps know about it, read the file `defining.txt' in
    >> the source distribution. Adding a new keyboard type isn't hard,
    >> just a little tedious.

    Peter> Thanks but no thanks.

*chuckle*  No, no, no!  Don't go there.  XKeyCaps really is GUI!

What you do is guess which of the keyboards seems closest to yours.
That's where you _start_.  Then you start pressing the keys that
aren't working for you.  XKeyCaps directly reads the hardware (more or
less) and lights up what it thinks are the right keys on the keyboard
displayed on screen.  If they light up on the screen in the right
places, then you can stick with that.  If not, you try again, and
change the basic keyboard that XKeyCaps thinks it's using.  Everything
that you could screw up on with XKeyCaps can be checked that way.

Once you've got an XKeyCaps keyboard that seems to connect to your
physical one correctly, you can start using the menus attached to each
key to swap functions such as Control and CapsLock, or add new
modifier keys (such as compose keys) or function keys (such as a kanji
key), or whatever.

Of course, if you do have one of those keyboards, then life is very
easy, you get everything right the first time.

Does that sound complicated?  I think it does.  But the point is that
that complexity will be present _anyway_, because people who try to
guess what xmodmap command is right for you are going to get it just
as wrong as XKeyCaps with the wrong keyboard initialization.  But
XKeyCaps provides a display to tell you you have the wrong map
_before_ you start messing with things (it is possible to use xmodmap
to create an unusable keymap, with no way to recover), and a UI to
help you control that complexity.

    Peter> Initializing USB controller  OK

Possibly a problem.  Look in /proc/interrupts and /proc/ioports to see
what resources the "USB controller" is using.

    Peter> (--) SVGA: Mode "800x600" needs hsync freq of 48.08 kHz. Deleted.

It means that various high resolution modes are predefined.  The X
server will try to give you the highest resolution your monitor can
handle.

    Peter> and how do I square that with hsync freq of 37.8 kHz?

Don't worry about it.  It's just telling you that it realizes it can't
use that mode.  Why does it try?  Apparently something in the
configuration suggested it would be desirable if it were possible.



-- 
University of Tsukuba                Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences       Tel/fax: +81 (298) 53-5091
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What are those straight lines for?  "XEmacs rules."