From: Doug Ewell (dewell@adelphia.net)
Date: Tue Oct 15 2002 - 22:58:00 EDT
Michael (michka) Kaplan <michka at trigeminal dot com> wrote:
> The use of either <CTRL> or <CTRL><SHIFT> shift states in Microsoft-
> supplied keyboards is very rare. The reason it is rare is that it
> interferes with programs that use those shift states to perform
> control actions (such as Microsoft Word).
I agree completely that assigning characters to Ctrl+keys,
Shift+Ctrl+keys, Alt+keys, and Shift+Alt+keys is a Bad Idea, for the
reason you state. It's not just about conflicts with large programs
like Word, either. Every Windows program with an edit control allocates
at least Ctrl+X for cut, Ctrl+C for copy, and Ctrl+V for paste. It
seems inconsistent for Ctrl+1, or even Shift+Ctrl+1, to be a character
and not an action.
I'm pretty sure I've seen at least one of Microsoft's Globaldev
(Javascript) keyboards that used either Ctrl or Alt as a shifting key.
I remembered thinking that such a thing was very un-Windows-like.
> It is also difficult (though not impossible) to query the actual
> information on these shift states due to the fact that USER will
> automatically map such keystrokes to control characters (if there is
> no assigned keystroke in the keyboard layout itself).
-Doug Ewell
Fullerton, California
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