Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[David Gordon Hogan]

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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.

I think this is just some Windoze stupidity.  Who knows.
I killed an IE process earlier today from the Task Mangler,
maybe that messed something up.  Regardless, I'm
adding the Alt-Tab Banishing Ritual to the Grimoire :-)

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From: anothy@cosym.net
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze
Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2002 17:53:06 -0400
Message-ID: <20020604215415.767EB19A7A@mail.cse.psu.edu>

your Alt key was likely stuck, or partially so.
pressing (or sometimes smacking) it will generally
clear it up, but you probably want to clean it out
some. keys down in the corners of keyboards stick
easier than others.
ア

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Quinn Dunkan]

> 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.

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Boyd Roberts]

Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> 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.

Keyboard shortcuts are the declaration of a broken mouse driven interface.

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Jim Choate]

On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Boyd Roberts wrote:

> Quinn Dunkan wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Keyboard shortcuts are the declaration of a broken mouse driven interface.

Never been around blind people, or people with no hands I see....

Open your mind.


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

              When I die, I would like to be born again as me.

                                            Hugh Hefner
     ravage@ssz.com                                         www.ssz.com
     jchoate@open-forge.org                          www.open-forge.org

    --------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Boyd Roberts]

David Gordon Hogan wrote:
> I think this is just some Windoze stupidity.  Who knows.
> I killed an IE process earlier today from the Task Mangler,
> maybe that messed something up.

Oh very easily as the traditional model is that a task is
asked to exit and I get the feeling the task mangler uses
some other strategy and rips it out of memory and doesn't
always leave things in a clean state.

The horror, the horror ...

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Andrew Simmons]

> Keyboard shortcuts are the declaration of a broken mouse driven interface.

Thank you, grasshopper. Also, do not despise the serpent for having no
horns, for it may become a dragon. And when you can take the stone from my
hand, it will be time for you to go.

By the way, are you by any chance related to Steve Jobs?

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Andrew Simmons]

> So I'm using drawterm to access Plan 9 from Windoze.
> Often I am able to use the "tab" key normally, but
> sometimes 'doze decides that when I hit "tab" I really
> want to switch windows (which is _never_ what I want).
> ie a different window gets pulled to the foreground.
>
> Does anyone know what the cause of this perverted
> behaviour is, and how to get rid of it?
>

Impossible to say given the information presented, pretty much as it would
be if I posted a query saying "Plan 9 doesn't work on my system, does anyone
know why?".

I've never seen this behaviour myself. Does it only happen when you are
using drawterm, or does it happen when, which is admittedly unlikely, you
are using a Windows machine for some other purpose? Does it affect all
running applications randomly, or only the same set of applications? Is the
problem repeatable on other machines running the same version of Windows?
And what version of Windows would that be? (95, 98, NT 3.5, NT 4, 2000, XP,
Windows Does Dallas etc etc?). What service pack?

Speaking of service packs, I think Microsoft have just broken new ground
with XP by introducing the concept of a beta version of a service pack.

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Micah Stetson]

> Impossible to say given the information presented, pretty much as it would
> be if I posted a query saying "Plan 9 doesn't work on my system, does anyone
> know why?".
>
> I've never seen this behaviour myself. Does it only happen when you are
> using drawterm, or does it happen when, which is admittedly unlikely, you
> are using a Windows machine for some other purpose? Does it affect all
> running applications randomly, or only the same set of applications? Is the
> problem repeatable on other machines running the same version of Windows?
> And what version of Windows would that be? (95, 98, NT 3.5, NT 4, 2000, XP,
> Windows Does Dallas etc etc?). What service pack?

I, too, have had this happen at odd and various times.  It does not
seem to affect only one application and I have never been using
drawterm at the time.  I know at least one habitual Windows user
who has had the same type of trouble.  I've no idea what causes it,
but it is no fluke as I've seen just what dhog describes take place
on multiple machines.  All of the ones I've seen it on run Windows
95B, but I don't use other Windows versions much, so it may not be
limited to 95.

Micah

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Jim Choate]

Actually it has to do with the way Windows does 'focus'. Windows uses the
tab as a select key. Depending on what 'mode' your Winblows box is in the
tab can take you from window to window, or if you're focus is in a given
window then tab will take you from one icon select tool to another within
that window.

Try an escape and a lot of luck.


On Wed, 5 Jun 2002, Andrew Simmons wrote:

>
> > So I'm using drawterm to access Plan 9 from Windoze.
> > Often I am able to use the "tab" key normally, but
> > sometimes 'doze decides that when I hit "tab" I really
> > want to switch windows (which is _never_ what I want).
> > ie a different window gets pulled to the foreground.
> >
> > Does anyone know what the cause of this perverted
> > behaviour is, and how to get rid of it?
> >
>
> Impossible to say given the information presented, pretty much as it would
> be if I posted a query saying "Plan 9 doesn't work on my system, does anyone
> know why?".
>
> I've never seen this behaviour myself. Does it only happen when you are
> using drawterm, or does it happen when, which is admittedly unlikely, you
> are using a Windows machine for some other purpose? Does it affect all
> running applications randomly, or only the same set of applications? Is the
> problem repeatable on other machines running the same version of Windows?
> And what version of Windows would that be? (95, 98, NT 3.5, NT 4, 2000, XP,
> Windows Does Dallas etc etc?). What service pack?
>
> Speaking of service packs, I think Microsoft have just broken new ground
> with XP by introducing the concept of a beta version of a service pack.
>


 --
    ____________________________________________________________________

              When I die, I would like to be born again as me.

                                            Hugh Hefner
     ravage@ssz.com                                         www.ssz.com
     jchoate@open-forge.org                          www.open-forge.org

    --------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[anothy]

your Alt key was likely stuck, or partially so.
pressing (or sometimes smacking) it will generally
clear it up, but you probably want to clean it out
some. keys down in the corners of keyboards stick
easier than others.
ア

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[David Gordon Hogan]

> You're really pressing Alt-Tab, not Tab.

Actually, I'm not, but using Alt-Tab once
appears to have cleared whatever bogus
state had been set.

Re: [9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[Russ Cox]

You're really pressing Alt-Tab, not Tab.

Russ

[9fans] OT: tabs in Windoze

[David Gordon Hogan]

So I'm using drawterm to access Plan 9 from Windoze.
Often I am able to use the "tab" key normally, but
sometimes 'doze decides that when I hit "tab" I really
want to switch windows (which is _never_ what I want).
ie a different window gets pulled to the foreground.

Does anyone know what the cause of this perverted
behaviour is, and how to get rid of it?