Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Quinn Dunkan <quinn@yak.ugcs.caltech.edu>]

> I don't think that's it.  If I hold down Alt deliberately
> and press Tab, the silly Alt-Tab popup hangs around.
> When Tab was misbehaving, I had no popup.

In my opinion, most keyboard shortcuts are broken by design in windows, because
you never know which of 500 little widgets or buttons has the focus now and
will absorb your keystrokes.  Perhaps this is a result of "don't need a mouse"
being a requirement of early versions.  Often when I hit alt (or something),
the little menu in the upper left corner gets focus and absorbs
everything I type until I figure it out or it closes the window for me.  This
is more fun than when the normal menubar gets focus since there's no visual
indicator that the little gizmo has focus.

Anyway, that wouldn't cause your alt-tab thing because supposedly alt-tab can't
be sucked up by some random widget.  Windows does tend to wander into weird
states for no good reason.

There are also random helpful features like sticky-keys that turn themselves
on when windows gets the impression that maybe you'd like it, which might have
the effect of fudging the "alt is down" flag into three-or-five-valued logic.

Impossible to know, but making guesses has an entertaining appeal similar to
theological philosophy, or discussions of theoretical physics with street
people in Berkeley.