Menu shortcut keys?

[jefferis]

I'm a new user of both X11 and OpenOffice and I've checked the manual, but can't find anything specific on how to use the underline letter version of the menu item [ like F for file menu> O for open, etc.]. Holding down control or command keys doesn't seem to work. Is this feature functioning in X11 on Panther?

Thanks
Jeff

[pluby]

We were just discussing this same issue in the NeoOffice/J Support forum today. NeoOffice/J has the same problem and we figured out that the problem is that Mac OS X uses the Alt key to compose to other letters. So, for example, when you press Alt-F on an English keyboard, Mac OS X turns that into a curly-f and turns an Alt-C into a c-cedilla.

So, in most cases, the Alt-key menu traversal shortcuts won't work.

Patrick

[OPENSTEP]

Under Apple X11 I don't think there's a way to get the alt key to be passed through to initially open the menus in the same fashion as on the other platforms as it is captured by the regular keyboard input (e.g. curly f, accent characters, etc.). Once a menu is open, however, you should be able to use the keyboard to simply type the underlined letter to activate that menu item and use the arrow keys to navigate through the menu. Of course, I can't think of how to open the menus under Apple X11 without using the mouse, at which point menu keyboard navigation is kind of redundant

IIRC way back when XDarwin offered the ability to treat the left and right sets of modifier keys on the extended Apple keyboard differently, sending one set as X events and the other as Mac events and special accent key sequences. I don't think any of the modern X11 servers support this any longer, though.

ed

[Hulot]

[kotsopoulos]

I tried out this hint with apple x11, osx 10.3 panther. When you execute xmodmap in an xterm the alt keys work fine.

However, I'm having trouble getting it to happen automatically when X11 starts up. X11 is picking up my ~/.xinitrc file but it doesn't seem to execute the "xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap" contained inside.

Can anyone tell me specific file locations/names and whether there is a particular sequence that thing need to happen in?

[OPENSTEP]

Hmm...looking at the file /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc it seems like it should automatically be taking any file named ".Xmodmap" within your home directory. I think that is the default xinitrc file used by Apple X11, but I may be confusing Apple X11 with XF86.

ed

[kotsopoulos]

I agree with Ed (above). I tried using an .Xmodmap in my home directory. If that's not present then xinitrc shoul pick up a default Xmodmap in the /etc/X11/xinit directory so I created one there as well. Then I also tried a .xinitrc in my home directory that explicitly calls xmodmap with my local .Xmodmap.

By this stage I lost track of how many permutations I tried and I gave up. I was hoping there was something obvious that I've done wrong. I'll have another try when I have some time later.

What about alt keys in Neooffice/J? I might post separately in the neo/J forums to check out the status.

[OPENSTEP]

I think that NeoJ will have a similar problem. From my experience the Java runtime reserves the option/alt keys for doing the Macintosh style character compositing during regular keyboard input (e.g. option-F produces the wavy f character and doesn't open the file menu). I'm not sure if there's a special feature built into NeoJ to do that initial toggle open of the menus from the keyboard.

ed

[OPENSTEP]

Hmm...quick thought. Does your X11 xinitrc file still open an xterm when X11 launches? If so you may be able to try to do a workaround by putting the xmodmap within your tcshrc or other shell init file. In theory that should be run each time a new shell is created and will be run when xterm inits after X11 has started.

Just fishing here...but it may allow a workaround for xinitrc or other startup timing issues.

ed