Keyboard remapping ... or the lack thereof.

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From: peter (Peter da Silva)
Subject: Keyboard remapping ... or the lack thereof.
Date: 15:40 on 08 Sep 2003
The poor state of the art in keyboard remapping in most software,
now that's a disgrace. In 1983, just about any terminal in the
world had at least 8 programmable function keys that could store
any string you wanted, and you could load them from an application
or just let them use the default. I had wrappers around programs
that loaded the keyboard mapping I wanted for that program (not
'what that program wanted', what *I* wanted), ran it, and set them
back. In 2003, neither the Macintosh nor Windows, the supposedly
friendliest operating systems you can get, give me anything like
that functionality. When you can remap keys, it's through arcane 
registry hacks or obscure XML files, or through little applets that
just do one thing, conflict with each other, and half the time
expect you to pay $10.00 to get rid of a nag screen.

It's the "ugly and hostile" X Window System that does the best job
here.

Ironic. 

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