OT: For all the Window haters

If you know what characters each key generates, you can usually do something useful with them.

If you have the 'codes' utility, that shows hex for each keystroke. Otherwise run this in the bash shell:

read x; echo $x | od -tx1

It will wait for input, so hit the key you're interested in followed by RETURN and you'll see what the key generated followed by 0a (LF). Here's the result of hitting F1 followed by newline on this laptop:

$ read x; echo $x | od -tx1 ^[OP

0000000 1b 4f 50 0a 0000004 $

I don't mind their prices but they did piss me off when they first bought and then killed off the Squeezebox range of audio products. Fortunately my Touch is well made, has support (though not from Logitech) and shows no signs of turning its toes up.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Martin Gregorie
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[Snip]

Forgive my lack of tolerance but I would expect a keyboard which is said to be compatible (Windows 7-64 in this case) should work in its entirety and not be told "sorry, mate, you'll have to buy a new one if you want to use those extra keys" by support @ logitech who can f*** right off for ever! It's companies like this who make Windows look bad.

I am sure that in all sorts of OSes I can use all sorts of utilities to make use of the extra keys but (a) there are not enough hours in the day and (b) 'compatible' and plug'n'play mean what?

You can be paying five times as much as for a same-spec non-branded webcam in a supermarket. Oh, and that DOES still work with win7-64 unlike the Logitech which simply does not.

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from Tim Hill who welcomes incoming email to tim at timil dot com. 
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Tim Hill

Windows does a fine job of that all on its own...

You may choose the price you want to pay for the product you choose to buy, for the application you want to put it to. It's called the free market. Long may it survive!

For some values of better.

Reply to
Tony van der Hoff

Why? Windows have had a tendancy to support extra non-standard keys (starting with more than the original set of four Function keys popularised by DEC on their terminals). I don't see why any other OS should be expected to either support them or ape what Windows does if they are pressed.

OTOH, as I showed, its not hard to see what character sequence the key generates and then use xmodmap to map the key to do something useful.

Some things are useful: I've remapped CapsLK so it only works in shift mode because, on this keyboard, I find I'm fat-fingering CapsLk too often. Researching and carrying out this remapping was time well spent for me, but ymmv.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Martin Gregorie

I expect a statement by the vendor to the effect that a device is compatible with X, that the device will work with X in its entirety. There were no caveats, so I don't expect any diminished functionality.

[Snip]
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from Tim Hill who welcomes incoming email to tim at timil dot com. 
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Tim Hill

If all the normal keys, i.e. those shown in a standard national keyboard map, work as advertised by generating the expected codes when those keys are pressed, then the keyboard is fully functional by definition.

If a manufacturer chooses to add extra keys whose functions are specific to particular computers or operating systems there's no reason to expect any other hardware or OS to respond to them: they are nonstandard additions and so not responding to them is not in any way 'reduced functionality'. BTW, can you point to *any* statement by a keyboard vendor claiming Linux compatibility for their keyboard? If so, post the URL.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Martin Gregorie

Really? Here's one:

formatting link
(click on the Specifications tab).

Reply to
Rob Morley

Yes, really. Dig deeper: Linux support is so old its got grey hair: kernel 2.6+, yet.

No Linux software or drivers are provided and no documented support for Windows-specific keys under Linux, i.e. no documentation about the codes output if they're pressed, hence nothing that Tim Hill seemed to think was supposed to make any or all extra keys work with any and all operating systems is mentioned at all.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Reply to
Martin Gregorie

why would they need to be?

and no documented support for

Just because it ain't documented doesn't mean it ain't supported

i.e. no documentation about the codes

Keys are not operating system dependent,. they are window manager dependent usually.

Logitech works with Gnome 2?

That do ya ?

>
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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Doesn't mean its supported either, which is what I was pointing out.

As an example of what I was getting at, on this Lenovo R61i laptop, looking at the bottom row of keys:

-the Windows key does nothing

-AltGr does nothing thet I can see except to cause read() to return EOF and set errno so that strerror() returns "Success",

-The pop-up menu key works (I'm using XFCE)

-The 'page forward' and 'page backward' keys are grabbed by Firefox, which uses them the page forward and backward though nothing else seems to see them. NOTE: these are NOT PgUp and PgDn, but different keys that complete the 6 key cursor block:

Pageback | Up | Pageforward Left |down| Right

There are some -Some of the 5 Lenovo blue-top keys (supposedly activated by the blue Fn key do something useful (screen brightness up/down, suspend, sleep, keyboard_light_on/off all work but the other 11 don't.

A bit more than that, unless the WN in intercepting and actioning thre blur Lenovo keys.

I wouldn't know: after a progressively worse experience with Gnome 2.2x in the run up to the heebious full blown Gnome 2 I dropped it in favour of XFCE, which does what I want without any of the Gnome crew's "We know what you want better then you do" nonsense.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Martin Gregorie

By the '6 key cursor block' you mean the keys of the multimedia and power sections of keyboard mapping, extracted below from one of my spreadsheets for decoding PS2 keycodes from an Arduino project for US,UK,FR, DE keyboards. Standard key definition and Make code are

Next Track E0, 4D Previous Track E0, 15 Stop E0, 3B Play/Pause E0, 34 Mute E0, 23 Volume Up E0, 32 Volume Down E0, 21 Media Select E0, 50 E-Mail E0, 48 Calculator E0, 2B My Computer E0, 40 WWW Search E0, 10 WWW Home E0, 3A WWW Back E0, 38 WWW Forward E0, 30 WWW Stop E0, 28 WWW Refresh E0, 20 WWW Favorites E0, 18

Power E0, 37 Sleep E0, 3F Wake E0, 5E

They are plenty of sites that list these keymappings.

Assigning them to do something is the job mainly of APPLICATIONS or background process of Window Managers not OS.

The GUI keys (Windows keys), menu key etc are still the pervue of the Window Manager in Linux systems.

Because they relate to BIOS level functions that are not passed even to OS. The others require interaction no doubt with drivers for things like volume control and muting, and are actually aprt of the set above.

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Paul Carpenter          | paul@pcserviceselectronics.co.uk 
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Paul

Purview

Or possibly purlieu

A perv-ue is what you get from a 'what the butler saw' machine...;-)

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I don't believe that Tim Hill mentioned Linux at all when on about his Logitech keyboard. He was talking about Windows 7 64-bit.

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Mike Fleming
Reply to
Mike Fleming

On Sun, 16 Aug 2015 00:13:06 +0000 (UTC), Martin Gregorie declaimed the following:

Probably intercepted by the BIOS layer and never even passed on to the OS.

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	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN 
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Reply to
Dennis Lee Bieber
[Snip]

I didn't say anything of the sort.

In future, please quote what I write and remove your personal filter of what you think I said.

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from Tim Hill who welcomes incoming email to tim at timil dot com. 
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Tim Hill
[Snip]

Thank you.

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from Tim Hill who welcomes incoming email to tim at timil dot com. 
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Reply to
Tim Hill

I assume you mean the ones that work? If so, I'd agree: there would seem to be little sense in letting Linux catch them and issue a call-back to the BIOS.

Presumably the OS is meant to register to handle the others?

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Reply to
Martin Gregorie

Quoting you wasn't possible since the post I replied to contains nothing written by yourself.

Kindly clarify what you meant by Operating System 'X' in what you *did* write.

Your content in a previous post certainly reads as if 'X' means 'any OS mentioned by the supplier in the device specifications'.

In the keyboard spec supplied by Rob no key assignments were given anywhere and the only software on offer was Windows drivers. I couldn't see any specific support details for OX X or Linux though all three OSes were mentioned as supported, so it doesn't look as if conforms to your expectations.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Martin Gregorie

Try Mate, its what Gnome should be, and is available in Wheezy, but even better in Jessie.

---druck

Reply to
druck

Sorry, I should have been clearer: I use the XFCE WM on my Intel/AMD boxes which all run Fedora Linux. My RPi is run headless at runlevel 3, so everything I do on it is via the bash shell in an SSH session.

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martin@   | Martin Gregorie 
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Martin Gregorie

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