Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
On Feb 4, 2008, at 2:26 PM, Christopher Barker wrote: I've found that most apps these days follow the same convention for the really standard stuff -- cut/copy/paste, save, except that the Mac uses command where Windows and Linux (which is to say KDE, GNOME, and Mozilla) use control -- why apple ever even added a control key, rather than making command==control, I'll never know. But there you go. My recollection is that the control key has been around since the stone ages (ASR-33 teletypes, at least) and that many of the standard control-key combinations (ctl-C, for one) had their well-defined meanings long before the Mac was introduced. For Apple to introduce a command key rather than saying ctl-c no longer meant 'interrupt' but now 'copy' makes sense. That MS (or IBM, or whoever) decided to start using ctl-key combinations to mirror Apple's cmd-key combinations seems like the more egregious offense. (If I'm misremembering the history, please correct me.) Tom ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
Nehemiah Dacres wrote: What is the difference between this editor and editra The big difference is that Peppy has been designed to be more flexible and expendable -- I think it has the potential to be a really great editor for ALL types of text files (and some others -- binary, etc.). Some of the key features: - user-definable key bindings, including emacs style multi-key bindings. - User definable major-modes for different file types. (and I think they are inheritable, so you could create one that was almost like an existing mode, then add/change a bit for your use. - Minor modes -- these are kind of like mix-ins -- extra functionality you can tack onto various major modes -- like word wrapping etc. - You can view the same buffer (file) in multiple windows at the same time. Is does currently lack a bit of polish, particularly on the Mac. Editra (and PyPE, SPE, ulipad, etc), on the other hand has been built to do what it does well, but without the built-in flexibility. No different modes, no user-definable key bindings, etc. It does work better for the basic stuff out-of-the-box, but I've bumped into limits already with it. In short, the developers have taken a different tack -- Peppy has been designed from the ground up with a focus on getting a flexible (and admittedly complex) framework in place, with some of the usability details on the back burner. Editra, on the other hand, has focused on getting basic functionality in place, including the usability niceties. This does make early version more usable, but I think, in the long run, Peppy has more room to grow. and is there any possibility that i would be able to use this via a console? I think there is a possibility in the future that a console mode could be built -- it's got good separation of functionality from UI, but there is only a wx UI at the moment -- I don't think he has plans for a console version. -Chris PS: Peppy is the only editor other than (X)emacs that has a python mode that does indentation right. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/ORR(206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
On Mon, Feb 04, 2008 at 02:52:43PM -0500, Tom Pollard wrote: My recollection is that the control key has been around since the stone ages (ASR-33 teletypes, at least) and that many of the standard control-key combinations (ctl-C, for one) had their well-defined meanings long before the Mac was introduced. For Apple to introduce a command key rather than saying ctl-c no longer meant 'interrupt' but now 'copy' makes sense. That MS (or IBM, or whoever) decided to start using ctl-key combinations to mirror Apple's cmd-key combinations seems like the more egregious offense. (If I'm misremembering the history, please correct me.) That's more or less it. The Apple II had a Control key before it had open/closed-Apple (Command/Option) keys. The Mac Plus and earlier had only Command-Option keys and no Control (or Escape) key, which made terminal emulation software rather unhappy - they typically used the Option key. The Apple IIgs and Mac SE/II were the first machines to get ADB, and thus keyboard compatibility between the two. The other II/Mac unification changes were the Escape key, renaming Backspace to Delete and adding the (open) Apple logo to the Command key, from which it was only recently removed. Apple had three ADB keyboards at that point: - the Apple Extended keyboard, the basis of every desktop Apple keyboard since, until the recent aluminum keyboard design http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Apple_Extended_Keyboard.jpg - the Apple Standard keyboard, with Control to the left of A, caps lock at the bottom left, escape to the left of 1 and arrow keys in order: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Apple_ADB_Keyboard.jpg - the IIgs keyboard, which was essentially a smaller version of the Apple Standard keyboard (and came out first): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Apple_IIgs_Keyboard_B.jpg The Extended keyboard was designed to be infrequently purchased, only by those people who wanted to run PC software on their Macs (Apple also shipped a 5 1/4 drive to be used with Macintosh PC Exchange around the same time), but it ended up becoming the dominant keyboard. -- Nicholas Riley [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.uiuc.edu/ph/www/njriley ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
Jack Jansen wrote: There are some apps that have sets of keyboard shortcuts and let you switch between them with a preference. Yes, and Peppy is one of them -- one of it's strengths. This is very handy, because now a Mac user of application X can chose whether s/he wants Mac-oriented shortcuts (so find will be command-F, for example) and another user of X on the Mac who happens to be familiar with the Windows version of X can chose Windows-X-compatible shortcuts (so find would be F3, probably). Right. I switch a lot between OS-X, Windows, and Linux a lot. I've found that most apps these days follow the same convention for the really standard stuff -- cut/copy/paste, save, except that the Mac uses command where Windows and Linux (which is to say KDE, GNOME, and Mozilla) use control -- why apple ever even added a control key, rather than making command==control, I'll never know. But there you go. Anyway, to help with that confusion, I've re-mapped my Mac keyboard so that: key action ___ command == command control == command caps lock == control Since CapsLock is evil anyway, I've remapped it to control on Windows and Linux also, so I can do the same thing everywhere. As far as Peppy is concerned, what I want is to have it behave the same on all platforms, except using the command key instead of control on OS-X. There are two options for doing this: 1) enforce that command==control in Peppy. This is what wx does by default if you use the right constants to define your keys 2) have a Mac keyboard mapping that is different than the other ones. I prefer the 1st approach -- it makes it easier have a default set of key bindings that is the same everywhere, and easier to move a key bindings config file between platforms. I was polling this group to see if that approach made sense to others too. It seems it does. I don't like customizable keyboard shortcuts in general (this is what makes it impossible to type anything in someone else's Emacs, for example), I agree -- I found the default emacs bindings painful enough that I've added my own, but now I can hardly use emacs if I don't have my own config for it. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/ORR(206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
On 1-Feb-2008, at 23:55 , Christopher Barker wrote: Hi all I'm trying help out Rob McMullen get his Peppy editor working well on OS-X. I'm thinking about about key bindings. There are some apps that have sets of keyboard shortcuts and let you switch between them with a preference. This is very handy, because now a Mac user of application X can chose whether s/he wants Mac- oriented shortcuts (so find will be command-F, for example) and another user of X on the Mac who happens to be familiar with the Windows version of X can chose Windows-X-compatible shortcuts (so find would be F3, probably). I don't like customizable keyboard shortcuts in general (this is what makes it impossible to type anything in someone else's Emacs, for example), but in this one case I think it's definitely worth it. -- Jack Jansen, [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.cwi.nl/~jack If I can't dance I don't want to be part of your revolution -- Emma Goldman ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
[Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
Hi all I'm trying help out Rob McMullen get his Peppy editor working well on OS-X. I'm thinking about about key bindings. Apple has the command key, but also an alt(option) key and a control key. I kind of wish they had never introduced a control key, but so be it. Anyway, it seems that for the standard conventions, like cut, copy, paste, save, etc, that Macintosh apps use the command key where Windows (and KDE and GNOME) apps use the control key. This, for cross platform apps, this is what I think should be done: On the Mac, the default behavior should be for command to do everything that control does on Windows and Linux, and control should do nothing. The alt(option) key should do the same thing as alt on the other platforms. This seems like it makes for the best compatibility. Is this a standard and good way to do it? thanks, -Chris PS: A plug for Peppy: Peppy is yet another text editor written with wxPython. When it first came out, I though arrggg! why another one?. But it turns out that the author's reasons for another one pretty much exactly match my reasons for never fully adopting any of the others -- they simple weren't designed to be as powerful and flexible as I need to make it my do-everything editor. I've been looking for years for an editor that meets these requirements: - Runs the same way on Linux, Windows, and OS-X - Works well for editing all the kinds of text I need to edit -- with customized modes for all of them (Or the ability to create such modes) - Good python support - Modern UI (all the standard keystrokes, etc), and integration with the OS (drag and drop, etc) - Scriptable in Python, so I can add the stuff it doesn't have. - Multiple top-level windows. In a nutshell, I want (X)emacs with a modern UI, and scriptable in python. Rob has set out to build exactly that, and I think he has done an admirable job of creating the kind of flexible, powerful framework that's required to really make it shine. It's still rough around the edges (particularly on the Mac -- I'm his only Mac user right now, and he doesn't have a Mac), but it would be great if some other folks could check it out and help clean up those rough edges. I urge you to give it a try. http://peppy.flipturn.org/ getting the SVN version is probably your best bet. I just added a setup_mac.py file that you can build an alias application bundle with: python setup_mac.py py2app -A I haven't yet tested a full app bundle, but it works pretty well with the Alias mode. -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/ORR(206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
Christopher Barker wrote:
Hi all
I'm trying help out Rob McMullen get his Peppy editor working well on
OS-X. I'm thinking about about key bindings.
Apple has the command key, but also an alt(option) key and a
control key. I kind of wish they had never introduced a control key,
but so be it.
Anyway, it seems that for the standard conventions, like cut, copy,
paste, save, etc, that Macintosh apps use the command key where
Windows (and KDE and GNOME) apps use the control key. This, for cross
platform apps, this is what I think should be done:
On the Mac, the default behavior should be for command to do
everything that control does on Windows and Linux, and control
should do nothing. The alt(option) key should do the same thing as alt
on the other platforms.
This seems like it makes for the best compatibility. Is this a standard
and good way to do it?
A lot of this can be automated in wxPython by following some basic
rules. First of all wxMac will automatically convert Ctrl-whatever
accelerators in menu items to be Command-whatever, so for example if
somebody writes the app on Windows and uses Ctrl-C for the Copy menu
accelerator then when it runs on Mac it will be turned into a Cmd-C.
For other key bindings, such as those handled in explicit EVT_KEY_DOWN
event handlers you can use the CmdDown() method in the key event object
instead of MetaDown() on Mac and ControlDown() on the other platforms.
CmdDown is simply defined like this:
bool CmdDown() const
{
#if defined(__WXMAC__) || defined(__WXCOCOA__)
return MetaDown();
#else
return ControlDown();
#endif
}
For explicit accelerator tables there is a wx.ACCEL_CMD identifier that
works the same way, it's equivalent to wx.ACCEL_CTRL on Windows and GTK
and to the command key on Mac.
--
Robin Dunn
Software Craftsman
http://wxPython.org Java give you jitters? Relax with wxPython!
___
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Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
Robin Dunn wrote: Christopher Barker wrote: On the Mac, the default behavior should be for command to do everything that control does on Windows and Linux, and control should do nothing. The alt(option) key should do the same thing as alt on the other platforms. This seems like it makes for the best compatibility. Is this a standard and good way to do it? A lot of this can be automated in wxPython by following some basic rules. Thanks Robin, I knew some of that, mostly because a remarkable number of apps do just work. However: - I wanted to confirm that I had the right goal -- it's obviously the way to do it to me, but I might have missed some Mac convention I don't know about. - Peppy is doing some weird things with key bindings, in order to allow people to totally customize them, and to allow emacs-style multi-stroke bindings -- Ctrl-X Ctrl-O for file open, for instance. It's now mostly working, but not quite, so as I set out to debug, I want to make sure I've got the goals right! Thanks, -Chris -- Christopher Barker, Ph.D. Oceanographer Emergency Response Division NOAA/NOS/ORR(206) 526-6959 voice 7600 Sand Point Way NE (206) 526-6329 fax Seattle, WA 98115 (206) 526-6317 main reception [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] Key Bindings on cross platform apps.
Chris: FWIW Qt has addressed this with QtKeySequence, there is a table of key bindings for standard keys here: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qkeysequence.html#details Note that this table may be confusing: On Mac OS X, references to Ctrl, Qt::CTRL, Qt::Control and Qt::ControlModifier correspond to the Command keys on the Macintosh keyboard, and references to Meta,Qt::META, Qt::Meta and Qt::MetaModifier correspond to the Control keys. Developers on Mac OS X can use the same shortcut descriptions across all platforms, and their applications will automatically work as expected on Mac OS X. Still, it's worth a look... - boyd ___ Pythonmac-SIG maillist - Pythonmac-SIG@python.org http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythonmac-sig
