X-Mailer: Mail User's Shell (7.2.3 5/22/91)
Date:         Sun, 8 Nov 92 23:58:29 -0500
From:         "Sarah L. Higley" <slhi@TROI.CC.ROCHESTER.EDU>
Subject:      Hazarding the Customs
Comments: To: Nota Bene List <NOTABENE@taunivm.tau.ac.il>
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.notabene

Well, I've been there and back.  Nothing like some healthy experimentation.
The x/ switch does work, and I was able to move my editing commands from
the arrow/number keys to the control-alphanumeric keyboard, but I would
warn anyone trying to do the same that there are some not so obvious pitfalls.
I'm still trying to straighten them out.  Perhaps someone could give me some
much needed advice.

The delicate thing is that I am moving functions that ask for alternate
keyboards (like ov,l,r; ov,l,c etc.) to the arrow keys and this has proved
somewhat treacherous.  For one thing, these keys are not really recognized
in the unshifted table, so that while hitting PgUp now gives me the beautiful
Greek keyboard, once in Greek, hitting 7,Home does not restore me to English.
The keyboard in Greek will recognize the edit commands now transferred to
ctrl e,f,d, etc., but not the commands in the unshifted (what do you call it?
the default?) keyboard for the arrow/number keys, so you're stuck.  What I
did try, for I was expecting this difficulty-- you look at the nblingua.kbd
layout and you see that the arrow/number keys all have duplicate commands in
their default states-- was to go in and change each 7,Home key for Slavic,
Greek and Hebrew to ov,r,l, but this was a dismal failure and confused my
keyboard so thoroughly that F9 seemed to think it was a block delete.
Scrapped that-- reloaded my keyboard and this time redesignated ctrl [ as
ov,r,l-- and VOILA, it worked.  I thought I was home free.  Here is what
I didn't foresee: in redesignating the command functions on the number/arrow
keys, I seem to have blocked the smooth operation of the F1 help windows.
I flip into Help and try to push the menus down the line with the remaining
gray arrow keys-- you know, the ones between your enter key and the arrow/
number keys-- and they beep, shudder and freeze.  Essentially, they won't
budge.  They take their commands, somehow, from the functions assigned to
the arrow/number keys.  Why they won't respond to the gray arrow keys is
what I am asking you experts.  Nor will they respond, of course, to my
new directional keys, ctrl d and ctrl s.

Sigh.  It looks as though trying to strip the arrow/number keys of their
original functions was a mistake.  I may have to find room on the ctrl
alphanumeric for about twelve displaced control keys.  With all this
reduplication of key functions, this is exasperating.  I have the gray
arrow keys which do the same as the arrow/number keys.  But they aren't
the same, obviously, to the help program.  The help program can't find
it's path to my reconfigured directional keys in control mode, but I can't
figure out why the gray keys won't work.

I will probably have to resituate all the functions I moved to the arrow/
numbers to places on the control alphanumeric-- I said that; I'm repeating
myself in my fatigue, here--; I've noticed what looks like some redundancy
in some of the commands.  Ctrl P and Ctrl M do exactly the same thing, it
seems, as Ctrl Gray +, although they are configured differently.  Can I
remove some of these commands if they are indeed redundant?  Those of you
who know the keyfunctions well; what keys can I get rid of?  Ctrl Y and
Ctrl D both seem to delete blocks.  Control Z (44=ov,r,g) doesn't seem to
do a thing.  Didn't someone ask about this command earlier?  Can I delete
it?  What is it supposed to do and why isn't it doing it?  I think there
are enough semi-colons making room for me, but barely.  I might have to
make some tough decisions, here, but I wouldn't want to end up disabling
something else further down the line, and not knowing what it is I had
done.

Thanks in advance.  I believe, that if this gets all its parts
put into strategic places, it can be pure MAGIC.

Sarah Higley