Subject: keyboard input of arbitrary characters (was Re: Patch: Win32 IME support)
From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Tue Apr 17 2001 - 14:31:56 CDT
At 03:52 PM 4/15/01 +0200, Mike Nordell wrote:
>Andrew Dunbar wrote:
>> Well we're using ALT+1,ALT+2,ALT+3 as text size keys. We may
>> need to handle keypad events specially?
>
>Yes. In any other windows application you can use ALT + n, where 'n' is the
>decimal value of either the ANSI codepage or the OEM codepage character
>depending on wether NK_0 was the first number or not.
I really like the idea of having a keyboard-driven ALT+ mechanism to input
arbitrary characters, but rather than stick to Windows-specific codepage
conventions, wouldn't we want to somehow specify *Unicode* characters as the
alternative to ANSI?
Just a thought. In any event, I'd happily give up the existing ALT+1,2,3
keybindings if that's what's needed to get a mechanism like this implemented
in a clean XP fashion.
Paul
PS: My spouse, the professor, has been using a shortcut mechanism like this
to add em dash and bullet characters to her documents for over a decade.
She memorized those key sequences so long ago that she doesn't consciously
remember what they are -- her fingers just flash and the character is there.
Unfortunately, her Mac is too old to run MacOS X, so she'll be waiting a bit
longer to upgrade to AbiWord. ;-)
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