keyboard error ?

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keyboard error ?

Postby hbarkhof on Sat Jul 27, 2019 9:48 am

Hi.

I can enter Logical OR or Logical AND
with the keyboard using Ctrl+9 or Ctrl+0

For Logical NAND or Logical NOR we should use
Ctrl+Shift+9 or Ctrl+Shift+0

Unfortunally the last one does not work for me , Ctrl+Shift+0
gives no results !

Is this a known issue or do I do something wrong ?

Using Dyalog APL/W-64 Version 16.0.31693 but Dyalog APL/W-64 Version 17.0.33755
has the same behavior.

Henk.
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby kai on Sat Jul 27, 2019 4:56 pm

Run the user command ]keypress and then press Ctrl+Shift+0

If it does not react it means that some program is intercepting the key very early, so Dyalog is not told by the Operating System; I have seen this more than once!
Last edited by kai on Sun Sep 15, 2019 6:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby hbarkhof on Sun Jul 28, 2019 7:51 am

Thanks Kai.

You pointed me in the correct direction!
After switching of "CTRL+Shift" to "not assigned" the problem was solved !
Sorry , have a Dutch system :)
Attachments
CTRL SHFT.jpg
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby kai on Sun Sep 15, 2019 7:03 am

This is an extremely annoying feature: why would anybody want to have a keyboard shortcut for switching from their own layout to an american layout by default? The few people in need for this should be forced to opt in rather than anybody else opting out.

But it has been this way for decades, so it is unlikely to change.

Ah well...
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby Morten|Dyalog on Sun Sep 15, 2019 9:27 am

kai wrote:why would anybody want to have a keyboard shortcut for switching from their own layout to an american layout by default?

Answer: Ach, you English ;-) Anyone who speaks a language which is not based on the Latin character set, but also needs to use a Latin based language. Quite a large fraction of the population of the planet, actually.
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby kai on Mon Sep 16, 2019 7:09 am

By default?!

The number of people who have accidentally switched to the american layout can hardly be overestimated.
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby Morten|Dyalog on Mon Sep 16, 2019 11:08 am

kai wrote:By default?!


It actually seems reasonable to me to assume that most of the people who have two keyboards installed do want a keystroke to switch between them. but I don't know enough about the numbers to have a very strong opinion. APL is a bit of a special case in that it is not really "another language".
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby kai on Wed Sep 18, 2019 1:14 pm

I am not sure what you mean by "keyboard".

I am talking about anybody in, say, Europe with a localized keyboard, say German, who presses Ctrl+Shift by accident and finds herself with an american keyboard layout on a German keyboard. Not exactly helpful at all.

Even when we consider a Russian who neds to type ASCII she is unlikely to be aware of the keyboard shortcut anyway. That's why I think it is a very bad idea.

Over the last 30 years I had to help certainly 50 if not more people who complained about having to reboot their machines once their keyboard layout went crazy: they never realized what was causing the issue.

If that's not an indicator for a usability issue then I don't know what is.
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby Alexey on Wed Sep 18, 2019 6:04 pm

OK, here is that very Russian )
To start, Kay I did not see a Russian typing ASCII for a number of years now... It is Unicode time here!
However back to business.
There are two separate things: the output of characters and the input of characters.
An output of big amount of different characters, any of those on the same screen or page, has been solved with introduction of the Unicode. 64K different characters are supported and there is a way, if I am not mistaken, to get even more.
The input is a totally different issue – just around 100 keys, ok, plus Shift, plus Alt, plus Ctrl, and the operating system tends to reserve quite a few of them for itself. It is far less than those 64K!
It is like working with colors. Years ago we had started with 16 colors, then 256, now 32K is not enough. I remember time when Word (or Word Perfect) had a shortcut for every supported color – there were only 16 of them! Can you imagine shortcuts for 32K colors?
If you happy to work just with 16 colors, then yes one keyboard layout would do the job for you, however if you like a more colorful world than you should invent a method to enter much more colors. One approach is to use a palette (1), another one could be to be able to support several keyboard layout with each of them having a different set of shortcuts for colors (2).
Now back to our characters. The approach (1) you may see in Dyalog – the APL character palette at the top of the session. The approach (2) is supported by operating systems and Dyalog does not have much to do with that.
One keyboard layout is enough to support Latin and APL characters. However, it is not enough to support Latin + APL + Cyrillic. Hence, I have to use two layouts: one for Latin and APL, and the second for Cyrillic and APL.
I switch between those two hundred times a day without even noticing that. Yes, sometimes I choose a “wrong” one… than again rather automatically I hit the Ctrl+Shift (or whatever keystroke is set for the switch) and get what's required.
There are “helpers” in operating systems to support multiple layouts:
- You always see the current layout name on the taskbar or a special small window.
- There is a default layout for Dyalog APL session.
- You can setup Windows (at least Windows 10) so it remembers the last layout used with particular application, or you can specify a default layout to be used when a particular application starts. Thanks to that, one can switch between apps and keep the most apt layout all the time.
There are some more helpers, I cannot remember all of them…
In my case, the life is even more complicated: I use virtual machines with different Windows versions on a Mac and, you know, Mac has a slightly different keyboard than a standard Windows machine. Moreover, there is Parallels – the virtual machines manager that also have its own customized keyboard layout. It sounds like a nightmare, but when everything is set it just works. In a way, it looks like those advanced multi-layer-keyboard pianos. For a novice it is a puzzle, but an experience piano player can do a miracle with it.

Finally, Henk, your problem does look like as a wrong setup somewhere but to provide a sensible advice more specific information required. It is not a rocket science and an experienced Windows user might help you.

Please, correct me if I missed the point. )
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Re: keyboard error ?

Postby hbarkhof on Fri Sep 20, 2019 12:15 pm

Very well spoken Alexey ! We can not expect from an English gentleman that he is aware of other languages in the world as English. :-)

My problem was easily solved , no big deal. Just looked in the wrong direction.

In the past I was learning Japanese and therefor had a Japanese keyboard and language installed. I found it
very usefull to be able to switch between Dutch , English and Japanese. As one is born in a English speaking
country , the interest of learning other languages is probably very spars?
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