[Kde-accessibility] Keyboard status applet

Gunnar Schmi Dt gunnar at schmi-dt.de
Tue Jul 20 16:07:33 CEST 2004


Hello,

On Tuesday 20 July 2004 14:57, Bill Haneman wrote:
> Gunnar Schmi Dt wrote:
> >>And how about also Scroll Lock, Insert, and whether sticky keys etc.
> >> is on?
>
> I would agree with Gunnar that Scroll Lock, Insert, etc. aren't modifier
> keys in the usual sense.  Also, most keyboards have LEDs to indicate the
> state of Scroll Lock, etc.  There are some other utilities out there
> that will display the status of such keys, for keyboards which lack the
> LEDs.
>
For the case that someone wants to only see Shift, Control, Alt etc., but 
not Caps Lock etc. or for the case that someone only wants to see Caps 
Lock etc. but not Shift, Control etc. an option to hide some of the keys 
would be optimal.

> [...]
> It would be better to ask the XKB extension about which modifier keys
> are available on the current keyboard.  We do this by calling
> XkbKeysymToModifiers for keysyms like XK_Alt_L, XK_Alt_R, XK_Super_L,
> etc. - if XkbKeysymToModifiers returns 0 for a keysym, we infer that the
> keysym isn't available in the current keymap.  See
> accessx_status_applet_initmodifiers in
> gnome-applets/accessx-status/applet.c.
>
Actually I had already copied the code to detect the available modifier 
keys from the GNOME applet, so the KDE applet, too, shows only available 
keys.

> Another very useful feature which would be nice to include in your KDE
> applet is feedback on "SlowKeys" status, i.e. whether a key has been
> accepted or rejected, and whether an initial press event has taken place
> or not. [...]

That feature would indeed fit very well into the applet. As with the 
individual keys, it should also be possible to hide this status item if 
the user does not need it.

> The GNOME applet doesn't display the modifier icons if StickyKeys is
> off; if no AccessX feature is enabled, the applet just displays an
> "accessibility" icon.  In this way, the applet tells the user whether
> StickyKeys is on or off, without taking up extra screen real estate.
>
As the information which keys are currently pressed is also usefull without 
the StickyKeys feature I will not follow the behavior of the GNOME applet 
in this case. (It is even possible to latch or lock a modifier key by 
clicking on the item in the applet even if StickyKeys is disabled.)

Gunnar Schmi Dt
-- 
Co-maintainer of the KDE Accessibility Project
Maintainer of the kdeaccessibility package
http://accessibility.kde.org/
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