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On Using X w/o the Rodent
Jacobian asks "I'm really sick of my hands acking from typing and using my mouse all day. I would like recommendations on a cool ergonomic keyboard, and a way that I can realistically say goodbye to my mouse once and for all in X. Every WM that I've used extensively has been very unfriendly if you don't use a mouse. Some (fvwm) you can avoid using the mouse most of the time, but eventually there is some focusing problems that make you reach for the rodent once again. Is there a WM in which I would never have to use my mouse?" I've never thought about it before, but having a keyboard friendly WM couldn't hurt. How do the different WMs rate on the various functions that can be accessed from both the mouse and the keyboard? (More)
Which actions cause the most long-term damage to your wrists: Repetitive keyboard use? Or repetitive mouse use? Would a keyboard friendly WM really help those suffering from wrist pain?
On a more personal note, I've found this submission to be rather ironic considering that for the past week, I've had to wear a splint on my wrist, due to an old injury (and not carpal tunnel, thank god!) commited in my reckless youth. So it's interesting that this one came along when it did.
I started having wrist pains from lots of mouse use, and switching to a Logitech Marble helped a LOT.. The marble is very ergonomic, but does require cleaning the ball every so often. I am now considering a keyboard with a built-in touchpad, but none I have found have a physical third button so I have held off.
Not to start a GNOME/KDE flamewar, but KDE is quite reasonable for most things without using a mouse. Alt-F2 can execute an arbitrary command, such as bring up an xterm (or kterminal) and Alt-Tab semantics work similarly to M$ Windows. You may have a little trouble negotiating with Netscape, however. Unfortunately, I think that no window manager can make all applications mouse-independent.
Peace and love, y'all
Used E almost exclusively and decided its focus menu comes up far too slow (as E tends to do) otherwise I think you could turn focus stuffs off so the focus wouldn't be a problem, and there's all sorts of binds for moving around desktops and a whole dialog for binding keys to do weird things.
Well, I still use my three-button mouse quite a bit, but I find that using KDE with KWM I can use a lot of keyboard shortcuts to navigate the screen, including Alt+Tab to switch among running apps.
As for ergonomic keyboard, I love my Adessos. They're available for ADB, PS/2, and AT connectors. I find that they are comfortable, durable and I type faster using them than on any other keyboard.
Just be sure to wear the gold uniform when you beam down -- you know what happens when you wear the red one.
I use Afterstep 1.0 still because I have all the common window functions programmed onto function keys. F1=maximize, F2=fg, alt-F2=bg, F3=move, alt-F3=resize, F4=iconize, alt-F4=close, F5=refresh, alt-F5=restart, F6 and on launch applications (eg: F6 launch xterm, F7 launch xterm on server, ... F12 launch netscape).
Between these and the existing keybindings I can do almost everything without the mouse.. except for one thing: Netscape.
There is no way to traverse the links in netscape without a mouse. Or not that I know of anyway.
You could probably program the above keybindings on any modern WM, I just can't be bothered to redo it, since what I have already works.
I have a both an IBM 600E & a desktop computer, and what I would be interested in is a keyboard designed for the desktop that has an IBM style trackpoint built in. The trackpoint doesn't require me to move my wrists at all, and although it really blows for Quake [II | 3 Arena] it would be nice to have as an *addendum*.
/. incessently I don't have to move my wrists, and when I have the urge to frag the night away I don't have to play around with cables.
I would want to have the choice of trackpoint or mouse, so when I'm reloading
Can anyone help me out?
i dont display scores, and my threshhold is -1. post accordingly.
WindowMaker allows you to switch virtual screens with ALT+1, ALT+2, ALT+3,...
You can also change focus between windows using ALT+TAB, and the settings allow for automatically raising a window when switching to it with the keyboard.
This is just too weird.
t ml
I suffered a strain of an old hand injury on Thanksgiving, and, like the author, I too did the splint thing.
I was researching around, and found that KDE has several predefined shortcuts, and even allows the user to bind the Windows© keys to certain things. Here is the link:
http://www.kde.org/documentation/faq/kdefaq-7.h
This helped me enough to get started, but, it made me seriously thnk about the way X ignores the kb, which, with its console roots, is quite ironic.
Good luck to you.
CTRL - ALT - Backspace
That takes care of that.
_.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._
ASCII art?? I thought it was a REGULAR expression
I know with gnome + enlightenment, you can alt+tab between windows (or any other key combination you choose). However I don't know about things like selecting menu items.
--Not quite on topic, but related...well it's on topic since it's leading to discomfort and wrist strain in X:
One thing I've noticed with the mouse in X is that for some mice, the multiplier is just too small. No, I don't mean acceleration. I mean the factor where it takes mouse movement * some factor to calculate each more. See, I have a Logitech Ps/2 firstmouse+, and the base speed is very slow (because to improve resolution it transmits physical movements as smaller steps).
In Windows, with Mouseware, I have these options:
- Speed (a slider bar sets this)
- Acceleration (slow, medium fast) (controls speed + threshold, or threshold is fixed perhaps)
However when I boot into LINUX, in gnome I have these options:
- Acceleration
- Threshold.
See there is no way to set the base speed in gnome. I end up kludging it by setting acceration to max and threshold as low as the slider allows.
This mouse movement problem is an X issue, not gnome. There is no way to specify a mouse movement multiplier independant of acceleration and threshold (I dug up the gnome control-center source to see the calls being made and looked those up).
So if you look at it this way, there should be three parameters that affect mouse movement:
accel
threshold
base multiplier (in X is always 1)
and movement would go like this:
movement threshold:
accel * (base multiplier * movement)
However in X it's always, base multiplier = 1 always.
I hope I'm not the only person in the world bothered by this.
XFree lets you hit ctrl-shift-numlock, after which the numeric keypad will move your mouse pointer. You can use + to click, ins to drag...
Just an interesting tidbit of info. :-)
I have to agree that the Logitech Trackman Marble+ is an excellent replacement for the mouse. I was having wrist pains in my right wrist from the mouse, and that hasn't happened with the Marble trackball. I also have a much stronger right thumb now =]
...and go to Linux without X.
You still have Lynx, and pine, and I find I get a whole lot more done without actually playing w/ windows or settings, or Q3A, or pr0n.
I mean, sure you can argue "What's the point?", but it is efficient enough for most work. Just change run-levels when you actually have to scratch your itch, and otherwise, you're good to go.
--sugarman--
If you are experiencing pain from typing and mousing an ergonomic keyboard won't help. Not by itself. You are over-using or at least mis-using your muscles and you need to slow down.
A better solution is to install break software like "xwrits" to remind you to take frequent breaks. Say every 10-15 minutes. You should get up out of your chair during these breaks since a lot of problems are actually caused by bad posture and sitting too long.
Ergonomic keyboards might be part of a solution if they help you use your muscles properly--but they cannot be the ONLY thing you do, nor can they be a substitute for taking regular breaks, fixing your posture, etc.
Also, a keyboard that works well for you might not work for someone else at all. Personally I tried lots of keyboards and wound up using a really ancient non-ergonomic keyboard because it had the best keys (they press with little effort but you can feel a bit of a click when they get far enough, so you can use minimal force).
should read like this (that section near end)
movement less than threshold:
1 * (base multiplier * movement)
movement greater than or equal to threshold:
accel * (base multiplier * movement)
What I think would be great is a program that lets you emulate the mouse with the numeric keypad. Window's has such a utility (but it doesn't really work all that great). Does such a utility exsist for X? I think many mouse-haters would find such an app very useful.
I learned how to use the mouse with my right foot. It was rather frustrating, and its a bit difficult right-clicking, but the effort has paid off. I no longer need to move my hands off the keyboard when using any window manager.
its always funny till someone gets hurt, then its absolutely hilarious
Being relatively new to the Linux/X-window system (not a cs major), I may not be the most knowledgeable source on this subject, but I can remember writing out some macros/shortcuts for tedious shell/vi/emacs commands for over the terminal use on the one *NX box I've been allowed to play with up until now. It seems logical to me that php/perl/python would be friendly to writing macros in the X environment for this application. This could be shared like a common .login/.profile/.*rc file to configure your shell or command line emailer would would be handy on a distro cd
Read my plan to save the Bengals
I was really excited when I found this feature. IMO, there are a few improvements that could be made, though (or maybe I just don't know how to do what I want):
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in my opinion (as a longtime carpel tunnel sufferer) it's the mouse that causes most of the pain. Once you get a good keyboard setup, the biggest pain is having to always reach over to move and click.
on my *tight* budget I use a simple split keyboard with an integrated touchpad. it's not perfect (there are better setups i'd prefer), but it has helped a LOT. i wish i could have found a keyboard with the touchpad in the middle (between the split), as that would eliminate even more movement..
oh well.
The keyboard is actually not that great; I like the tilting design, but actually wish it would tilt more, say, to almost ninety degrees! Also, these stupid bastards put in two MS 'Start' keys, one of which is directly to the left of F1, so you always hit F1 when you want F2, etc. But I haven't seen anything better that's actually on the market as opposed to being in development. If anyone knows of similar but better products, please let me know.
The mouse I really like. It's three button with the buttons a little rearranged, but I got used to it really quickly. I'm sure the buttons can be reassigned in X anyway. If an ordinary mouse has left, middle, right buttons labeled 1 3 2, then the Goldtouch is 3 1 2. It's very comfortable.
kemokid
One of the things I found really handy in AmigaOS was being able to control the mouse with the keyboard - you held down combinations of the Alt and left and right Amiga keys and used the cursor keys to move, or to use either mouse button. It wasn't the most pin-point control, but it was totally independent of any need for application support and saved my bacon many times (especially when I had a break in my mouse cable and had to survive a couple of days before I could buy another one).
I'd love it if someone would add this sort of functionality to X.
I have an old serial logitech track ball that a friend gave me. It works fine under X. It has a very flat profile and a large button on each side.
.twmrc that binds META+TAB to "f.warpring" or something. Has oanyone had any success with this sort of thing?
My window focus is set to follow the pointer.
I have about 7 inches between the edge of my desk and my keyboard. The spae immediately in front of the spacebar is where my trackball sits. I can stretch out a thumb to move the arrow, or even just run my wrist across the ball. Makes for a very low impact environment.
It has to be a low profile design though. my parents have a Microsoft trackball and my strategy certainly wouldn't work well with it.
I am running TWM. I've been meaning to look into setting a mapping in my
I use WindowMaker almost exclusively... I get by with most everything by having comfortable default window sizes and by hotkeying everything. I have 10 desktops start up automatically, F12 for menu, F11 windowlist, F8 for xterm, F9 for netscape, alt+enter for (un)maximize, alt+u for (un)shade, ctrl+esc for window menu, alt+h for hide, etc. etc. By setting up things based on how you work 90% of the time, you can make your life much easier... However, there are of course times where you have to use the mouse... netscape isn't friendly to tab & co. I want one of those control chips embedded in my brain so that I can move a cursor with my mind... oh yessss... Speaking of window managers, though - in a side note, of a sort, how about an ADD specific window manager? It'd be an interesting study between psychology and user-interface design. How exactly would you go about designing something like that? It'd be a cool project, but I don't think I could focus on it long enough to see it through... ;) Well, didn't really answer the post, but I did ramble for a while. If it makes anyone feel any better I hate the mouse, too. For some things (e.g. xbill) it's great. For WM UI's, it blows. later
press shift-alt-numlock and you've got the keypad to use as a mouse.
arrow keys move. pressing two keys simultaneously speeds the movement up (otherwise it's painfully slow).
5 clicks. / changes it to left click, * to middle click, and - to right click (i think). + double clicks in whatever click mode happens to be engaged.
it's not the easiest thing to use, but useful for when your mouse just won't work (whether because of your wrists, or cat chewed cable).
The thing that would probably cause my the most problems not having a mouse would be using a browser.
I've always thought it would be nice to have a gui browser that was as easy to navigate with the keyboard as lynx but could display tables and images and all the other pretties. Netscape is a real pain in the butt to move through links and such without a mouse
---- There is a fine line between sayings that make sense.
I have an old serial logitech track ball that a friend gave me. It works fine under X. It has a very flat profile and a large button on each side. My window focus is set to follow the pointer.
.twmrc that binds META+TAB to "f.warpring" or something. Has anyone had any success with this sort of thing?
I have about 7 inches between the edge of my desk and my keyboard. The space immediately in front of the spacebar is where my trackball sits. I can stretch out a thumb to move the arrow, or even just run my wrist across the ball. Makes for a very low impact environment.
It has to be a low profile design though. My parents have a Microsoft trackball and my strategy certainly wouldn't work well with it. It's larger than a mouse and has buttons in strange locations.
On a different note, I am running TWM. I've been meaning to look into setting a mapping in my
Checking out the keyboard-configuration program under WindowMaker, here are the things you can do with the keyboard:
.
.
.
.
.
.
As you can see, there's quite a lot of keyboard control built-in. Try it out!
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The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
The real meaning of the GNU GPL:
"The Source will be with you... Always."
I find WindowMaker is the best. I've set up most window commands to my personal config. I can close, minimize, maximize, and raise/lower a window from the keyboard. Plus I can execute anycommand I like by pressing F2. Most buttons I find can be handled with tab ;-) The most reasuring thing is that I'm extremely frusttrated in any other WM or OS. WMaker definetly satisfies me. I think E is quite similar but that thing is a hog! WindowMaker has never let me down.
On the hand it also allow you to use your existing mouse for stuff like games (e.g. Quake 3). Anyway just my little post.
Nathan
As far as window managers go, when I last used fvwm2 a while ago, I was able to bind keystrokes to do actual mouse movements. This might help with those focusing problems you mention -- while I certainly wouldn't want to use a keyboard-controlled pointer for a lot, simple things like switching focus shouldn't be too bad.
Unfortunately, you'll probably never be able to entirely say goodbye to the mouse. But, with a decent keyboard and pointer combo, you can make it a bit less painful. My hands started hurting a lot less when I switched to the Adesso.
I had the same problem and after I've tried many different WMs, I settled for Window Maker. You can define key bindings for any function that it can peform (from switching desktops and windows to menus).
I've been using it for almost a year now, and I had no reason to switch to a different WM based on functionality.
The problem I couldn't solve however was the fact that each GUI app has its own command bindings (if any at all). Gnome and KDE are trying to create a certain standard, but they're not there yet.
Most likely the easiest way is to run Linux console-only or Linux+X with a lot of *terms open...
- twm is hopeless, dumped it long ago.
- fvwm2 is quite good to use without a mouse. The reason: you can make it switch to a specific window with on key stroke based on the WM_TITLE and WM_CLASS of that window.
- WindowMaker can largely be operated with the keyboard, but to switch to a specific window, you have to get the window menu (usually F11) and then select the window based on the first letter of the window title (using arrow keys is far too slow).
- I am currently trying E, and having to use ALT-TAB is annoying.
What I really miss most in all window manager (that I tried) - except fvwm2 - is selecting specific windows with one keystroke (or an ALT-whatever combination).I am currently pondering whether it would be worth the effort adding this feature to E - but E 0.16 still has serious memory leaks, so I don't know whether I won't have to switch again anyway.
This is seriously troubling me and if there were a cool looking (theme-aware) WM that can be easily used with the keyboard only, I would immediately switch.
Chilli
-=- Just a random lambda hacker
One more thing.... beware of wrist splints! They give you short term relief by taking the load off the muscles that are bothering you, but they are long term doom.
The danger is that your muscles will atrophy in the splint. Then when you remove it you will re-injure almost immediately--you will probably think you're just not recovered yet, but in fact it is the weakening of your own muscles because of the splint that is causing your trouble!
You have to learn to type properly using all of the muscles in your shoulders arms, forarms, wrists, and fingers, balancing the load so that nothing is overworked. You cannot solve the problem with gimmicks like splints--you actually have to solve the problem with the way you type, and with how much you type.
Instead of using a wrist splint type without one. Type as much as you can WITHOUT symptoms, taking frequent breaks. Try to find out how much you can do before you experience symptons and do just under that much typing. Make sure you keep typing every day--don't lose your endurance. On the other hand, it's a mistake to do exercises to "strengthen" your hand--typing all day long is enough exercise.
If you're having trouble you really should see a doctor who knows something about typing injuries. Many doctors will tell you to use splints--these are the ones who know nothing about typing injuries, go and see someone else--ask to see a specialist.
I think that the whole UI should be taken down and rebuilt from scratch. There is technology that would allow you eyes to lead the mouse around, how many times have you wished that you would need any hand and eye, why not just eye. Think about it, never have to touch a nother mouse, just put on some glasses and go w/ it. Just a thought.
Death is not optional, so live your life w/ out fear of death. FEAR HIM not them Matthew 10:28
www.kinesis-ergo.com
:) (been used in a few movies, for their sci-fi-ness).
:) I'll probably do a wee review of it once I've got it so maybe check base.yi.org tomorrow..
they're not cheap, but they're certainly the best I've found so far. and they look absolutely superly cool
although to be honest I haven't got one yet, it should be arriving in about 12 hours though
el bobo
I find I can do just about anything in either KDE or XFCE without using a mouse. I'm referring to the desktop environment only: many applications still need a mouse. Also, though one can position windows with arrow keys, I find the mouse more convenient for that.
I was drooling at the "DvortyBoard" and I was wondering if anyone had tried it.
It'd be nice to be able to look on the keyboard when I need it, and the keyboard doesn't have an altogether horrible layout (Windows keys and weird space button can be overlooked for a Dvorak keyboard). The site also mentions a Dvorak tutoring program, which is surprising because I wasn't aware that there was such a program.
Anyone care to shed some light on the keyboard, the software, and whether or not it's worth $50?
CDE is designed to be usable with only a keyboard if need be. It works quite well. Motif apps in general work very well with just a keyboard. I use the keyboard to navigate quite often, and I find the CDE handles this superbly.
Also, the X FAQ has a section on using X without a mouse. It's on ftp.x.org somewhere. I believe there are mouse key type things.
kde is a very good choice if you're trying to eliminate the mouse. There's keyboard access to just about everything in all the apps, and the wm pretty much allows everything from keystrokes as well.
But gnome will as well, as will most of the WM's. It's just that the wm's don't come configured that way usually. Learn a bit about xmodmap, spend some time configuring the tools you use, set up your default session the way you want, and you can pretty much forget about the mouse in X.
PS. The real key to all this is the whole 'alt key opens the menu' idea. Does anyone know who first did that in a bitmap display? Is it possible that it's actually an MS "innovation"?? (ISTR one of the early DOS char-mode GUIs did this, Geo-something???)
Are there any projects out there that use eye control, rather than mouse? Do we all remember that special about Stephen Hawking on PBS a while back? He uses a system that allows him to use his eyes to look at certain spots on the screen. Through a hierarchical type of software system, he can look at a certain category of words, which will lead him to a list of sub-categories, on and on, until he reaches the word he wants to "say." He stairs or blinks at it (I forget which) and it gets spoken (or written, if he's writing a paper or something). The way his machine "sees" his eye movement, IIRC, is by two sensors attached on the sides of his monitor. I've read of other physically impaired people using similar systems.
:)I imagine this would cause a great deal of eye strain though...
Couldn't X be the same way? If the position where your eye was looking was interpreted as the mouse cursor, and blinks==clicks and double blinks==double clicks, you could do everything you do with a mouse (except the little scrolly-wheel thingy-something I've grown to require.
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
I switched from KDE/KWM to GNOME/E recently, mainly because it was default in the new computer, and, face it guys (even KDE guys agree mostly), GNOME/E is definitely better looking.
However, in terms of just using the mouse, KDE scores! With zillions of windows, I found myself Alt-tabbing with comfort on KDE desktops, primarily because of the windows-style icon list that pops up.
E, because of the way it handles Alt-tabbing, (I'm told) can't do this icon-listy-thingy. That's sad, because sometimes I choose my window *while* my Alt is pressed: it might be a window on some other workspace, but since the icon's there, I can keep pressing tab till I get to it... instead of doing Alt-tab and have each window in the ring refresh as its displayed; even before my desired window comes up.
Given that i usually work in emacs/xterms/lynx, Alt-tabbing is one huge reason less to use the mousy. Netscaping is usually very mouse intensive, but I'm more relaxed then, as opposed to when I'm coding and don't wanna move my hands all over the desk
amit
A friend of mine had similar complaints, and has been much happier since switching to a touchpad. Personally, I don't care for touchpads... but given enough pain, I could become a fan.
We use ctrl-alt-F1 to do more than one thing at a time.
The '+' key double-clicks. I don't think the Enter key is used at all (perhaps making it the accelerator instead of '5' would be a good idea).
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When working on database stuff, and coding you mostly dont ever really need anything more that window management! I enjoy not having to point and click thank you very much!!!
:)
Now for that you can use X-/ emacs to do almost anything!! Split things into windows and you are set! you have termials, editing windows, or even webpages
what more can you ask for..... it really is a pain to have to use the mouse to switch windows, and most WM's are not able to make screen splits like emacs... now i know this will not be practical for most ppl, and if VI can do it.. GOOD!!! all i am saying is that if your work involves writing ESQl/Perl/C++/HTML or something like that Emacs will work just fine! I loved using it on a primarily CDE box all summer!!!
Non-Deterministic Finite Automata
Electric knife.
These keyboards rock... I got the DVOARK model and absolutly love it from: https://secure.vscape.net/officeorganix/kenis1pr.h tm
We have a helpful mousepad from Case Logic at work. It has a two-chamber, gel-filled roll that velcros on to the pad, and supports your wrist. It's helped me alot.
I just switched to the new MS Explorer mouse (the one without mechanical parts). I'm not sure if it will help other people, but for some reason I don't get a sore right wrist as much or as often. I'm not claiming that it's Bill's new toy, but maybe the shape of it or the smoothness helps. I gurantee there will be some propaganda at microsoft.com/mouse that says its super ergonomic.
A Logitech TrackMan Marble FX
(and I mean an FX and not a Plus)
and a Happy Hacking keyboard
is a significant relief for not
only your desk space, but also for
your wrists.
BTW: Does anyone know an alternative
supplier for Happy Hacking type of
keyboards? The Happy Hacking stuff is
really a little bit expensive.
My biggest problem was the edge of the table. I'd rest my wrist on it and it was cause circulation and nerve damage.
;-)
I switched to a keyboard and mousepad that kept me from doing that and the pain and numbness has been gone for about three years and counting.
Might work for you -- not that you won't have enough suggestions by time this is all over.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
idea
OK, so I learn something new every day... it can be used as an accelerator (thanks to the poster in a later thread for pointing this out). Apparently hitting any key while the pointer is in motion will speed up the motion. Shift looks like a pretty good choice for this to me.
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However, a common lament is that netscape doesn't allow you to tab. This is very true and very annoying. But for those who don't keep track of Mozilla's development, Mozilla does allow you to tab through the links, making keyboard naviagation much easier.
Just another AC who will probably not be moderated so no one will see this.
Another option is to get a Dvorak keyboard and see if that works better for you. A Dvorak keyboard is supposed to be much more efficient than the standard QWERTY keyboard. What I mean is that the space your fingers have to move to type most words is much less, reducing the strain on your hands. It's also supposed to be faster. Downside is learning a new layout. Here is an URL with some info on the Dvorak layout.
As for not using a mouse that gets tricky in a GUI environment. I've never tried it, and it is pricey, but footmouse.com has a foot operated mouse. If your goal is to reduce wear and tear on your hands, maybe it is worth looking into.
You could also check out the portion of the typing injury FAQ that deals with alternative input devices. Perhaps you could substitute something for the mouse or keyboard that is more to your liking.
Hope this was helpful.
All the keys have two letters on them, which is extremely confusing at first, and no one else can just sit down and use the keyboard without being really boggled.
really there isnt much advantage to this over just rearraging the keys on your qwerty board and changing the software.
monkeys.
All three of these have it so the user can set up their own hotkeys for windowmanager actions. I'm personally partial to sawmill. The configuratability of Emacs, looks of Enlightenment, and very light.
Eric Anderson
It seems every X11 window managers' design heavily incorporates the mouse as a necessary tool for window management. I even get this impression from reading snippets of POSIX specs. Here's a (very botched) paraphrase, or at least, the impression I got when learning about POSIX window manager recommendations:
"The window manager should not intercept any key bindings... they should all be passed to the application and the mouse should be used for windowing."
Anyway, I have, since I first booted linux and fired up X, always thought this was STUPID. The one thing that I see Windows having over Mac OS or linux window managers was the common, global key-mapping that comes from a tidbit of smart thinking at one point in the design (or stealing somebody elses' idea) and then the subsequent forcing of all the applications that run within your operating environment to adopt "similar" keybindings and look-and-feels.
I took key bindings for granted in Windows. Say, in the middle of anything else, I suddenly had the urge for some Slashdot in a maximized explorer window.
Ctrl-Esc R iexplore [enter] [F4] www.slashdot.org [enter] Alt-[SPACE] x Done. Or maybe size it a bit and move it some. Alt-[SPACE] S (arrow keys) [Enter]. And the cordless mouse is still stuck somewhere in the couch cushions with dead batteries.
Before I figured out that there were window managers that supported something other than focus-follows-mouse, I almost developed tennis elbow, slapping that rat around to keep my focus where i wanted it, and the windows raised where I wanted them. very frustrating.
I moved to BlackBox, because it was nice and speedy. But I still had no pop-up root menu on the keyboard. (I kept telling myself I'd learn C++ and contribute a patch)
later I moved to Windowmaker, and found out why people swear by that. Its neat, theme-able, and nicely configurable. But something about it still irked me. Maybe I preferred the simplicity of BB.
three days ago, i slapped Sawmill on my machine and I think I've found a new love. It's all configurable in the same way emacs and scwm are, very modular, and it looks all pretty, very theme-able too. Not too bad in terms of speed, either. It's not blackbox (I loved BB's responsiveness) but it works well, and you can BIND stuff. With a wussy GUI configuration editor, even! If you want. wow.
So now i have a nice pretty desktop, that plays nice with gnome (even though I don't use gnome much), yet is not quite as hungry as Enlightenment or KDE, and supports lispy customizations (I don't know it well enough to code yet, but i can see the ability of the program to expand). I've got alt-space mapped to the window controls, ctrl-esc mapped to a popup app list, and f12 mapped to the root menu. So now i can, once again, sit on the couch across the room with the cordless 'board and have nearly-full control over my work environment. All I have to do is figure out how to configure it to be able to size the windows with the keys. That and implement selection, copy, and paste using shift and arrow keys. :-P
Maybe the whole system is flawed and maybe Berlin will work more to my liking. Man, i wish i already knew how to code. Then i'd just go FIX all this stuff, instead of bitching about it, eh? ;) (Helping berlin or any other OSS project to completion would be hella cool too.)
Good luck, jacobian, in your search for the "right" configuration.
Of course, you'll need to use the mouse to initially configure your key bindings.
I'll admit it. ( no one else has )
I use an original M$ natural keyboard. The newer cheaper 'elite' keyboard layout for the arrow keys and the insert/del etc keys suck.
I really like the Logitech Mouseman Marble.
I find typing all day long is not as bad as using a regular mouse. It is much harder on the wrist.
DONT TREAD ON ME MOÎΩN ÎABÃ
Could this at all be inspered by the osOpinion article One area where Windows is ahead of Linux?
For my personal makeup the sun keyboard ruined me. I could only work 25 hours a week without pain killers. I bought a kinesis Classic QD and a sun PS2 --> Sun converter and have been able to get back to my happy 55 hours of geekery without any issues. Takes a bit to understand the placement of the tilde and curly brace but then its fuckin sweet (as only a keyboard geek could appreciate). www.teos-inc.com was the cheapest place online to find any kinesis products. Derek.
I picked up a 20+ dolar keyboard at the Sac. Fry's. Basicly it's laptop style. Same smaller key's and goofy layout but, it's only about a foot long has all the key's ( H.H. is a bit too minimal for me) and is slim enough that a wrist pad is more or less not needed. I also have a TrackMan FX (best $50 i've spent). I still use my older 3btn logitec mouse for games but the FX is great for everything else. Question though.... What I'm realy looking for is something between the keyboard I have ( basicly a laptop) and the HappyHacker. The 87 key IBM sounded cool but no pic. and 170 bucks.
The IceWM seams to do a very good job of not having to use the mouse. In particular it uses almost all of the MS Windows shortcuts for window manipulation. For some reason people don't seam to like icewm. Could it be because it just to simple? Or could it be becuase it is too much like MS Windows?
The Scheme Window manager is the most programmable window manager in the X universe (at least of all the ones I have tried). Everything is dynamically configurable and programmable. I have been using it for almost a year now and have used it to build extensive window manipulation commands.
There are two unique features from SCWM that allow pointerless operation. First there is that SCWM is linked against Guile; it doesn't use some sissy scripting language. Second, SCWM can generate synthetic events. So besides being able to program how to manipulate windows, you can also manipulate programs.
(If you are an Emacs user, there is a scwm mode that will directly eval you scwm config file and send if off to the window manager)
Some examples of things that are possible with synthetic events:
- Instead of using the C-S-NumLock X hack you can actually make a usable version of it.
- If you know the offset of a button in a window you can cause a click on it. For example, if you use exmh, you can define a keymap that occurs if the pointer is sitting in an exmh window. This keymap could bind the letter 'r' to the click the reply button, so you can effectively drive a normally mouse driven program with the keyboard.
There has been some amazing work that has gone into SCWM and everybody should at least try it out. It is fucking awesome.
I think that the end to all window managers would be if SCWM were to merge with Enlightenment. All the eye candy from E, and all the useful functionality from scwm (think, you could have your background set to animate when mail arrives, or other stupid window manager tricks).
I picked up a great one for ~ $30 US at Circuit City...check HERE It's similar to the Wave 5.0 model there, w/o touch pad...
I experienced a lot of pain e few moths ago due to extensive mouse/keyboard work, particularly using photoshop. After consulting a few people I had my sysadmin buy me a wacom pen tablet and it works wonerfully after you get used to it. Holding a pen is much more natural for your hand and wrist than holding a mouse and you get special sections on the tablet that simulate keyboard shortkuts.
While you're waiting for the tablet try these things my physical therapist told me:
-switch mouse arm, this might be difficult for all but the most ambidexterous but in all situations where I don't have my wacom I switch every hour. This gives both your arms a bit of essential rest.
-Make sure you sit behind your desk in a proper way, sit straight with your seat/desk adjusted so that your elbows hoover just above the level of your desk when you let your shoulders hang with your upper arms along your body and your hands resting on your desk where your keyboard/mouse should be.
I hope this works for you, whatever rout you take make sure it stops hurting soon even if that means you have to stop working, I've been very close t real carpal tunnel and I'm never going there again ever!
Try Scwm. Not only does it let you do all WM-type stuff with the keyboard, it lets you bind keys to synthetic mouse events so you can avoid using the rodent even in apps that would otherwise require it.
You can't completely get rid of the mouse in X, no matter how hard you try. You can use keys for most functions, but some things will always bite you and force you to use the mouse.
Therefore, I wouldn't focus of getting rid of the mouse, but replacing it with something else. Some people have mentioned using the keypad; this works but I wouldn't recommend it (a keyboard isn't anywhere near as responsive, nor can it be; it wasn't designed to control a mouse pointer).
I would personally recommend a trackball. They use less disk space and the motion seems more natural to me. I use a Kensington Turbo Mouse (that's "Expert Mouse" to those of you in the PC world), and it works great in MacOS and LinuxPPC both (though I have yet to figure out how to make the fourth button do anything on the Linux side; I'd like to map it to a double-click if that's at all possible).
Touchpads also work. Tracksticks work well once you get used to them, but good luck finding one on anything that isn't a laptop. Then there's that funky brainwave headband (I don't know if it supports Linux yet though).
If all else fails, you could go totally wacko, plug a MIDI keyboard into your machine, and write a driver to control the mouse pointer by playing it. It'd be almost impossible to use, but you've got to admit that once you had it working it'd be seriously cool. Of course, it'd be hard enough to use that it defeats the whole point of the mouse in the first place. But who's counting?
As for ergonomic keyboards, try some out before you take the plunge. Like trackballs, you either love them or you despise them. Best not to get stuck with a keyboard you like even less than your current one.
Now, I'll praise Linux as much as any John Q. Torvalds (I wouldn't trust my websites on an NT machine any day), but I also use a Windows 98 machine at work and have one machine installed with it at home. Ironically, one of the large reasons I use Windows 98 is because of it's kerboard-friendly design. The keyboard shortcuts are almost universal in every application.
There, I said it; I use MS-Windows. Does that make me a bad person? Perhaps. Does that make my opinions wrong? Of course not. Am I entitled to my opinions? Yes, of course. Next time someone feels like using a reply like "You're a dork", take a step back and listen to these words. Everyone is entitled to their opinions. It is not our job to judge whether those opinions are valid or not. When it comes to operating systems, it is up to you to make your own decision. Or better yet, don't make a decision. Accept each OS for it's own merits and strengths.
Don't want to pay Lars? Sue him!
Fvwm2 can come damn close to being totally mouse-less. I have all of my favorite apps hooked to CTL-ALT hotkeys. I find it much easier on the wrists than straining for F. It also supports assigning hotkeys to moving the mouse cursor around (Man, I love it. Is there anything this WM won't do? :)
The only problem is that clicking the mouse buttons can't be done with the keyboard: most X programs ignore such "synthetic" mouse events. I have also set up CTL-tabbing to be pretty close to the M$ style (which is unfortunately the best way of switching between windows I have used). And to top it all off, FVWM2 is far easier on the system resources than KDE, WindowMaker and the perpetual-alpha Enlightenment.
Please excuse any incoherence, see time stamp.
The repetitive motion damage caused by various devices in my experience:
Regular mouse = 9
Regular keyboard = 8
Ergo keyboard = 7
Logitech Marbleman = 3
So, I would argue trying a trackball-type pointing device would be more likely to help than switching window managers.
There are other issues, however, which do argue for a more-keyboard-friendly window manager, specifically productivity. I have managed large numbers of keyboarders for many years and found that taking away mice improves productivity 15 percent if the programs being used can be operated without a mouse. If the programs cannot function without a mouse, switching to a rodent-free program will improve productivity 25 percent.
The reason for this is simple: Although a few operations are more efficient using a powerful mouse-tool-set (think Mac, not Windows), a vast majority are better done from a keyboard (particularly one with programmable power-chording capabilities). But the average user will gravitate to the easy-to-figure-out mouse actions rather than spend the small effort to learn the faster keyboard equivalents. Every efficiency gain of the mouse is lost five times over to pull-down menus.
One hesitates to consider how many millions of man-years have been lost down the black hole of MS Word.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
About a year ago I started having some serious wrist problems in my right hand, and to add insult to injury, it was right when I switched to Linux. Well, I dug through some old stuff, and low and behold, there was a beautiful trackpoint keyboard. It needs no additional wrist movement, and while it's not as good as the mouse for gaming, seeing as it's both slower and it rubs your finger raw after excessive use. I still have my mouse laying around for whenever I get the urge to play Starcraft. Now the only problem is shutting my friends up.. Nobody but me seems to like the trackpoint..
I'm suprised I haven't seen anyone mention the one-handed keyboard + pointer combo. IIRC the demo that Jobs saw at Xerox PARC had a chord keyboard and some sort of mouse. I can't buy hardware right now, but for my next desktop I'm going use a Dvorak one-handed with a trackball (maybe). Then again, I may never buy a desktop if I can find a monocular that does at least 800x600 :)
works well for me. I have learned to use my thumbs to slide and click, and fwvm2 works with key shortcuts.
The ION-ETM system adds the IONTM Eye Control Software to the basic software for head control, and allows full control of a computer with your eyes. Two tiny cameras in the headset observe both your eye and the beacon on your monitor, allowing the computer and the IONTM Eye Control Software to determine where you are looking on the screen. As with ION-HTM, the ION-ETM system also senses
intentional blinking, and uses that for clicking and dragging.
In WindowMaker, you can almost do everything through keyboard shortcuts. Alt+X to go through virtual desktops. Alt+tab to switch between active and open windows, F11 to get a list of all windows. ctrl+esc to get the properties of a window. F12 for the application menu. I added alt+f2 to open up a tkRunIt, which is basically like kwm's alt+f2 (or windows run). The application that I find myself having to continually use the mouse for is netscape ARG!@$!@$. Browsing a page is no problem with they keyboard, but it is impossible to go to a link w/o using the mouse. They should make a link cursor that moves to the first link on the page as you scroll the page, and then another set of keys to move through links on a page. That would be a great help
I have a toshiba laptop with one of those trackpoint pointing devices in the middle of the keyboard. I love it, since I can move around without ever removing my hands from the keyboard. Does anyone make a keyboard like this for a desktop machine?
If your keyboard has a Windows key, you can use WinKey + R instead of Ctrl + Esc + R to open the Run box. Just thought I'd mention this to you since the Ctrl + Esc + R method seemed to require somewhat awkward finger movements. (While I'm at it, WinKey + E, WinKey + Pause, WinKey + F, WinKey + D, and WinKey + M are also pretty nice shortcuts.)
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
it's a mistake to do exercises to "strengthen" your hand--typing all day long is enough exercise
This is as wrong as the idea that doing lots of jogging will build up strong legs (BTW, if you want strong legs, do squats or leg press). Typing is what got you into this mess, it won't get you out.
If you want to strengthen some part of your body, you need brief, intense, and infrequent exercise. Constant light (like typing or jogging) use tells your body to conserve energy by paring down to bare essentials. That's why many geeks have scrawny wrists and finger problems and most long-time joggers have scrawny legs and knee problems.
To strengthen the fingers I strongly recommend this exercise: lay a sheet of newspaper (just one, as you get stronger you'll want to stack up two or three pages) flat on a table in front of you, grab it with the fingertips of one hand and crumple it into a ball without using your other hand or squashing it against anything (including the table). Repeat with fresh sheets until you try and fail to finish crumpling the last sheet. If you feel pain in your joints, stop and try again tomorrow. Do this every day for a week or two, then every second day or so indefinitely.
Another good exercise is wetting a towel and wringing it dry over and over, or squeezing a soft foam ball. Remember, exhaust as rapidly as possible then rest as long as it takes to recover.
Oddly, strength increases spill over between near muscle groups, so if you work out your arms you'll help strengthen your fingers too (you don't have to get fancy, just grabbing a sack of potatos and curling and pressing it overhead ten or twenty times with each arm will make a huge difference if you aren't getting much exercise). And of course, if you work out your back and legs you'll get stronger all over; deadlifts in particular can transform your entire body, and have a dramatic effect on your grip.
If at all possible, avoid all typing until your fingers are strong and healthy again: remember, it is like jogging after you've had problems with your knees. Switch to the hunt-and-peck method if you must use computers, and do odd things like hitting the keys with your thumbs if your fingers get at all tired or sore. Rest frequently.
The basic principle of strength increase is anabolic stress (which should be intense for maximum positive effect and brief for minimum negative effect) followed by adequate rest. Your body heals, grows, and strengthens only when you rest. If you overload your body when it should be resting, you cause cumulative damage, not strength gain. This is why no sustained strength training program should be done more than once every second day.
First and formost: I am not a window-manager/desktop zealot. I use the GNOME panel, "dfm" as my file manager, and Sawmill as my window manager. I use what suits me.
:) Those Three extra worthless keys they put on keyboards have come in handy. Pretty much every CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT combination has been taken by one program or another. Almost nobody touches the Win or WinMenu key. I use both my mouse and my keyboard, so I havn't use this key-binding feature to the fullest, but I only keep the GNOME side of things around because of its prettiness, and the task list. I launch all my programs through keybindings.
e x.html
To be honest, I just switched to Sawmill because my machine is slow, and version 0.17 had the features I desperately wanted.
If you're willing to do a bit of work, Sawmill may be your answer. All of the configuration is done via the lisp scripting languange. That means pretty much anything the window manager is capable of can be assigned to a key-stroke. Thank you Microsoft!
If you are interested in Sawmill, go to http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~john/sw/sawmill/ind
As a warning, Sawmill is under very heavy development. I've never seen so fast a release cycle(I got 0.17 a week before 0.18 came out. To be honest, if 0.18 hadn't come out[with the ability to assign windows arbitrary properties], I would have switched back to Enlightenment). Good luck!
Oh, yeah. To answer the question about ergonomic keyboards, there is a keyboard I've seen that completely imobilizes your wrist. Actually, I sort of put it in an executive's desk. the keyboard itself is parallel to the floor, but there are two large hollows, hemispherical, with keys embedded on the curved surface. To install it in the desk, I took out a portion of the desktop, and dropped the keyboard in. Now the exec's arms and wrists rest more-or-less flat on the surface of his desk, and his fingers to all the moving. I don't know where he got that keyboard, though...
Dave
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
Wouldn't it be nice to be able to move the cursor just by locking at the screen? I guess this would be possible, if you look at the Cannon cameras, some of this has an eye controlled auto focus, yes, I know that they have a very low resolution, but what I'm trying to say is that it shouldn't be impossible. Put on a pair of glasses, and look at the window! This will off cause be very annoying if you have a cursor; since it would always be right on top of whatever you were looking at. :)
I'd like to jump on the wagon of saying how great Sawmill is for keybindings. As well as mouse-bindings (I've set mine up so that right-clicking on ANY of the window borders brings up the wm menu, and middle-clicking on any border moves the window. All annoyances of inacessable title borders are gone.).
As far as devices go, the mouse was a great, revolutionary technology of it's time. All props to Douglas Englebart, however, I think it's time has passed. It seems that industry has said "ooh! people will buy a mouse" and just gotten stuck in a rut. Roller-wheels, third buttons, and pretty colours are NOT a revolution. I hate to leave the home row, and just wish there was an ergonomic setup that would mean I didn't have to (after last weeks article that taught me how to switch CapsLock and Escape keys, I'm one step closer).
The ideas that I've thought of are: a keyboard split in two, and you roll each around (think of a keyboard and mouse getting married and having two kids), a pressure sensitive wrist pad that translated subtle movements in both wrists into mouse movements, or eyball tracking. I believe I played with an eyeball tracker at the Ontario Science Center when I was a kid, so I don't think it's new technology. But I remember it having real trouble initializing -- figuring out where my eyes were. If this is still the problem, how about really distinct coloured contact lenses ala Marilyn Manson. I'd wear 'em if it would mean more time with my precious home row. Or maybe the other way around -- contact lenses with sensors in them that would work similarly to Nintendo's Duck Hunt. You all remember Duck Hunt don't you? (contact lenses might be overkill here, glasses would probably work, but then you'd have to move your whole head. Carpal Tunnel Neck)
As far as surfing around your (multiple) desktop(s) with solely your keyboard, I've found that the following scheme works well:
Ctrl-Alt - - - - Window Manager and X
(focus, shifting desktops, shutting down X)
Alt - - - - Application User Interface
(File, Edit -type menus, menu item shortcuts)
Ctrl - - - - Application
(Ctrl-x sends mail in pine, Ctrl-Left moves forward a whole word in word processors)
Shift - - - - Modifies above commands
(usually reverses the direction)
With Alt-Tab being the exception to the rule here. I'm still not comfortable with it switching window focus because it doesn't fit in the pattern. But Ctrl-Alt-Tab is a lotus position for my fingers. Hmm... perhaps Ctrl-Alt-Space...
And this doesn't really leave any room for desktop commands, ie, how to open the Gnome Panel's menu. Maybe Ctrl-Alt fits, but I'm not convinced.
I think there should be some sort of standard, so that when a user downloads some new window manager, it's defaults shouldn't interfere with his/her customary behaviour. Does a standard already exist? Anybody? I think ultimately, it should all be user customizable, though. (again, mad props to Sawmill).
Okay, perhaps I should start my 1500 word essay due at 8:30am now.
- sjbrown
- works at
I've tried many mice and trackballs, and my favourite hands-down is the Kensington Expert Mouse. The trackball is huge - the size of a cueball. It's easy to control and never tires my wrist. It's a bit pricey for a rodent-type device, about $80 or so, but considering how much of the time I'm plugged in, it's an investment I've never regretted.
I developed tendonitis (not quite carpal tunnel) about three years ago. I think it was excessive mouse clicking, combined with bad wrist posture, that finally did it. All of a sudden, working with the mouse caused my forearms to ache and tingle, and typing on a standard keyboard for more than five minutes caused greater pain.
After doing some research, I bought a Cirque SmartCat touch pad, and a Cherry split keyboard. Both were awkward for the first few weeks of use, but I eventually got used to them.
The results: they worked wonders! With the new hardware, I was able to work all day long without much pain at all. Moreover, after a couple years of using these products, I believe my wrists have actually healed to some degree. I no longer need to wear my wrist splint, and I can now use the mouse again (for gaming!) as long as I'm careful about posture. Well worth the $200 I spent. (I suppose I should also mention that a good adjustable office chair, about $100 at Office Depot, helped as well.)
As far as I know, Cirque is the only touchpad manufacturer that got it right. It is small, yet I can move the pointer across the screen and back without lifting my finger from the pad. I don't even have to use the buttons, as it lets me tap the pad surface instead.
I chose the Cherry split keyboard because it was very adjustable. It can be made comfortable for people of just about any shoulder width, and can be collapsed into the form of a standard keyboard. Moreover, the number pad is a separate item, so I can place it on either side of the keyboard, or completely out of the way. safecomputing.com used to carry them, but they seem to have been replaced by the Kinesis models (which have a very similar key layout).
By the way, it's true what they say about split keyboards: Once you're used to them, you never want to go back.
Hi, working with keyboard without the mouse works just fine in KDE, but I have problem getting X running without a working mouse plugged into the computer, X starts up but the keyboard is disabled for some reason when X probes for a mouse.
When I edited out the mouse parameters in the configuration files, X simply refused to start giving me an error message saying that I really needed a mouse to use X.
-- Tov Are Jacobsen
I use afterstep, and I have bound Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down to "to front" and "to back." So if my mouse is over window A and Window B, I can use Ctrl-Up and Ctrl-Down to switch between them. Once you get used to it, you'll never be able to live without it.
-Dave Turner, AC of convinience
I've had one of these sitting on a shelf unused for three years now because I couldn't get the buttons working. I'm not thinking about the 4th button -- I've never been able to get more than 2 distinct mouse signals out of it. (It acts like a 2-button MS mouse with two left and two right buttons.) How do you get it to send anything interesting? I'd appreciate any pointers.
The problem is that we need bigger keyboards with way more buttons. COLORED buttons with VERBS on them like HELP, LOGON, NEXT, PREV, SKIP, FIND, GET, EDIT, DO, UNDO, STOP, GO, MAKE, MAIL, FART, MSN... I want a keyboard with at least 400 buttons on it. And flashing lights too, I want colored flashing lights under every button except the typewriter buttons (don't wanna confuse myself) And I want it to be made by Fisher-Price
I'd like to add my kudos for this product as well. It's by far the most comfortable mousepad I've ever used. My wrist rests lightly upon the gel at a perfect horizontal inclination and my wrist needs shift *ever* so slighty to move the mouse around. It requires about the same range of range of movement that my trackball requires.
It's cheap, too: $15-19. Much less then a $99 trackball (anything less isn't worth using). I use a wonderful Logitech Mouseman (s/n LZB71151754). Any other mouse bugs me, but it's probably because it just happens to fit my hand and the caselogic mousepad perfectly.
Just my 0.02 EU. YMMV.
--==Hail Eris!!==--
Your chair *MUST* have an arm rest. This was the one most important thing that gave me a mouse arm.
Get a smaller keyboard so the distance travelled between the keyboard and the mouse is shorter. I use a MS Natural Elite keyboard.
Try to avoid using the mouse when you don't have to. Use keyboard shortcuts instead of menus.
Be very restrictive by using the correct typing on your keyboard. E.g. always use the right Ctrl key when doing a C-x c in Emacs and not the left one.
And the last one, use the mouse with the left hand. I had to resort to this last year. But haven't had any problems after I corrected my typing, avoided using the mouse too much and got a correct chair.
Not that anyone will read this. *sob*
Does someone know the state of the art when it comes to eye position detection?
AFAIK, it can be done in an inexpensive way by detecting the electric field naturally existing in the eye, and that would be one hell of a pointing device, once precisely calibrated.
OG.
Have you experienced the horrors of the Johnson Keyboard? The idea is that you never have to leave the home row. Unfortunately, due to a really lame implementation using xmodmap, you type the space with your little finger, which rapidly becomes painful. If it ever gets done right (like with an X patch, or something like that) it might be worth taking a look at.
They belong to something called Common User Access (CUA) and are used by Motif, OS/2, Novell, even text based menus on IBM mainframe 3270 screens.
It is highly ironic that the GUIs on Linux are so keyboard shortcut unfriendly. (And I don't mean just lacking shortcuts, but lacking these CUA standard keyboard shortcuts)
Do a search for "cua keyboard shortcuts" on Google for lots of books papers and advice going back to the early 90s.
-mlh
Unfortunately, the mouse grates on your eye, and I think I just blinded myself trying to double click.
Ouch, I have to run to the emergency room...
I use gnome && enlightenment... I use alt tab to get between windows on the current desktop and alt F1-F4 to get to my four desktops...
I also find that I like the "sloppy focus" and "new windows get the focus" options in enlightenment...
launching gui's is either done with the mouse or from the command line...
the gui is dead, long live the gui!
I have to say, I don't know about Linux, but standard X does allow you to set the multiplier.
When I worked on Suns, I wrote myself a little program to allow me to change the multiplier, accel and threshold in my login script, cos our system didn't save settings for them. Whether it's possible in the various X implementations under Linux, I don't know.
Got to get round to sorting out my dual boot sometime.
Graham.
The best thing would be to have something like the keypad option in X, but, obviously, the keypad is not intuitive - it should be "hjkl", of course!
Regards,
January
In a good UI it should be possible to use every program almost as effective as before. Of course many programs will not match this criteria. How about writing bug-reports (yes, missing software-ergonomy is a bug) or, if it is an open source program, adding a few code lines that keyboard-enable the program?
Related thoughts:
Wouldn't it be nice to have a kind of command-line at the bottom of the screen that I can use to control programs?
(By typing something like gimp.file.open "foobar.png")
Wouldn't it be nice to have all those toolbars disappear when I don't use a pointing device?
Do we really need mice/trackballs etc.?
been thinking about this too, I use Windows and Linux so I'm using both Explorer.exe and X. Explorer has a decent keyboard interface which I've used when I couldn't get my hands on a serial mouse cuz the system had no PS/2 port. Most WMs I've used with X on the other hand don't have a good keyboard interface. X's mouse interface isn't all too snazzy either, the cursor (in most WMs I've used) had a real odd movement. I think added keybaord functionality would be good not only for those of us with sore wrists from using mice all the time but also very useful for non-PC systems like WebTV and the like. Linux is a powerful and small kernal that could be ported to net appliances but X would have some difficulty because it has problems with keyboard interface which many net appliances are limited to.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I have a somewhat similar dilemma when I use Be. I have it on a dual boot w/ W98, but I have a wireless mouse which Be does not support. Sometimes I forget about this until it is too late and Be has already booted. Is there any way to move the mouse cursor around in Be, or even a keyboard shortcut to get to the Be start menu (so I can viably restart)?
Sorry for being kinda off-topic.
Before I moved to Linux I used Opera on Windows exclusively... I twas easy to manipulate via the keyboard, and would handle everything except Java, which I didn't miss anyway, even accepted Netscape plug-ins... and I have heard it is coming to X Windows soon...
Chill bro. I don't think I've _ever_ heard anyone trash Windoze for its keyboard interface. Just the BSOD, the leaky MFC and the sloth. But the kbd interface is well thought out.
One thing I will say about M$, ( all software aside ) somebody makes them some fine hardware. I have a SideWinder 3Dpro joystick, it is solid. The original M$ Nat. keyboard has a huge footprint, but is a damn nice keyboard. Whomever admits to designing the M$ Elite Keyboard should be first against the wall. A fine example of DBCC (design by clueless commitee)
DONT TREAD ON ME MOÎΩN ÎABÃ
I've had the problem all time. Now I'm mostly using a laptop with seperate keyboard and seldom bend over to reach the touchpad. icewm has been the solution. Virtually everything (focus, desktop change, iconize, rollup, menu) is on some key. Even better all configurable. Very recommented. Only those f* buttons need a click. Just learned about the Shift-Numlock feature, but the mouse movement is too slow for me. Does any1 know how to config that?
I began to have problems, largely due to switching between mouse and keyboard. I changed my mouse, moved it to my left hand, checked my posture, etc. But I also found that keeping some fresh water nearby (get a filled water bottle handy), and drinking often, really seemed to help. I've heard the same thing from others, so I suggest you keep well hydrated to help avoid typing pain.
"It's overkill, of course. But you can never have too much overkill." - Anonymous Slashdot Coward
Technically, this works, but it is not the preferred solution to the stated problem.
This keyboard rocks... http://www.acerperipherals.com/ps_input/ps_in_eg61 .htm it has a touchpad in the center which works perfectly and the numberpad is completely seperate ...
Cosmic
I've been thinking about buying a mouse-pen, which seems to be would be a whole lot nicer on the hand.. Free-pen
in Window Maker, it allows you to move and resize windows with keyboards.
Most windows apps uses the same shortcuts, except microsofts own...
If you for example want to find (ctrl + f)something in Word 98/2000 and you use the swedish version, you will get bold characters instead... (Find is ctrl+b...) I can't keep track of all times I've made my text bold instead of finding the word I want...
Maybe this problem doesn't exist in the english versions, but I bet many nonenglish M$ apps have these problems...
--
"I'm surfin the dead zone
In the twilight, unknown"
Don't know any keyboard friendly WM, (yeah, MS-Windows 95 / 98 NT4.0w etc you don't have to use the mouse too much...).
As for my work, I use a Microsoft ergonomical keyboard, as I was having Carpal problems fighting millennium bugs. This MS-keyboard is very nice. The keys are soft to press, but aren't pressed when I don't want to. The arms and wrists rest nicely on the desk.
The Carpal problems were solved. Anothing thing I discovered was that most pain is caused by the nummeric keypad. There is an advice to use keyboard macro's to do things you do most... DON'T use nummeric keypad! I did, went to a doctor eventually.
It's a pity that X-windows doesn't work with the keyboard very well, (i.e. focus with the tab key). I myself have X running on Linux, and if I have to do some work, I usually do it on console.
If you work on a Solaris network, you probably don't have text-oriented consoles, so no solution to this one.
Another thing with mice: I have a mouse-pad with wrist-support. I push myself to put down the wrist first, then use the mouse, it does stop the acking.
Bizar technology?
I was wondering the same thing once i started using linux, i use KDE personally and one of the reasons, believe it or not, that i still use windows the becuase i can skip around to the objects using my tab key. That was one of the first differences i noticed in KDE. On the keyboard note i use a Microsoft(tm) Natural Keyboard, I think it works, feels a bit odd at first, but i hate going back to a straight keyboard because of the cramped space and my fingers get a little crowded heh, and i have a Logitech(tm) Track Man Marble, that works very well your arm rarely hurts becuase of the shape and how you aren't moving around all the time so i would suggest that also. Just a couple tid bits to relieve computer nerd syndromes.
Well, I don't know much about linux (i'm learning :), but i have a pretty intimate knowledge of the problem you're running into. I have had (and am still dealing with) tendonitis. in this thread, some people mention exercise and taking breaks. well, this can be good or bad depending on how stressed your tendons are. depending on how bad your are, i would definitely suggest seeing a specialist. i was a music major and ended up w/a severe case of tendonitis. the tendons had swollen so much that my hand wasn't moving much. i ended up not being able to use my right hand for a very long time. i learned to be ambidextrous. i would also put ice on it to try to reduce the swelling and put warmth on it to keep the muscles from freezing up. eventually, i was able to start the strengthening exercises and the flexibility exercises i needed to get my hand/wrist back in shape. btw, stretching is great for tendons. another thing to help is drink lots of water. this helps to keep the flexibility in your tendons. i also took aikido after my hand was in better shape and you wouldn't believe how much that helped. i hardly ever had problems when i was in aikido. i don't know how bad your condition is, though. the treatment you should do all depends on how far along you are. if your tendons are highly inflamed, then you should probably slow down. if they're not, then look into stretching and strengthening exercises. just like you should always stretch when exercising your legs and body, you should do the same w/your hands. analyze how you type and the position you're in. do you slam the keys hard? is there a lot of tension in your fingers? do you touch type? if you do or don't will probably affect what type of keyboard is best for you. do you take breaks (these are important)? do your fingers come way off the key when they've pressed it? are you resting your arms or wrists on the edge of something? how high is the keyboard resting compared to how high you're sitting? do you have large hands and the small keyboard causes you to be in a cramped postn, and the mouse is too small? do you have small hands and have to stretch far to reach the keys, or is the mouse too big? how do you sit? do you rest the keyboard on your lap like i've seen many do, or is the keyboard on the desk or a pull out tray? these are all questions you might want to look at to solve your problem. wrist splints are ok....kinda. they can also cause major problems. it really depends on how you're using them and what you're using them for. i found that when i used a splint and tried to type, i would end up getting more tense (i was unconsciously fighting the restriction) and hurt myself instead of helping. but, they're good for keeping your wrist in one position and keeping you from doing things with it that you maybe shouldn't be doing. wrist splints are more for keeping you from using your hand and letting the swelling go down. but you might not have that much swelling. there is another thing you can get that's not a wrist splint. it's a small cuff that just wraps around your arm. it helps to relieve the pressure. but, yet again, you would want to use it in moderation, and don't cut off the blood flow with it. the best suggestion is to go see a specialist, though. he or she can help you to diagnose how you're causing the strain, how bad the strain is, and how to relieve it for you in particular. if you don't go see a specialist, then i'd suggest looking at diff keyboards, diff types of mice, how you type, how much tension is in your hands, stretch, drink lots of water (not pop - this dehydrates you and causes the exact opposite how what you need), and take breaks. you might also want to look into strengthening if you're at the right stage for it. also, sometimes a small cushion can help to rest your arm/wrist on when using the mouse. don't make it too high up, though. ok, that was alot :) now i'm going to go take a break and stretch *smirks*
but i really, *really* like my microsoft natural elite keyboard. it's really light (great for putting down on your lap, sitting on your knees when you're leaning way back, etc) and it's incredibly comfortable. as for a mouse, the logitech mouseman wheel is pretty durn good. it fits my hand really comfortably and the scrolling works in gnome apps (haven't tried it with kde). hope this helps at least a little.
--
you must amputate to email me
i read all replies to my comments
I've had several RSIs in the past. My solution has been the Kinesis ergo-keyboard. While not cheap, it is the best.
Clearer of the path to wisdom and enlightenment.
Do you have an extra serial port? Why not just use a serial-port mouse?
I use linux. I love linux. BUT... Windows is very keyboard friendly. Much more so than any WM I've used. I think it all comes down to consistency. Alt-Tab, Alt-Esc, menu access, hot keys, all are very regular across windows applications. When I used to use windows I never touched the mouse, keyboard was faster. Linux could learn a few things from windows (and vice versa :)
Ryan
Apologies for that -- hope it's still readable enough. Somehow, my `Use HTML' choice was reverted to extrans.
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
This is a fundamental flaw, because the designers destroyed the connection between screen motion and motion commands. They should have a follow link and a pop link stack command which are separate from the Cartesian motions. Left should move you in a negative direction along the X axis. Right should move you in a positive direction along the X axis. Up should move you in a negative direction along the Y axis. Down should move you in a positive direction along the Y axis. Anything else is madness because it's completely counterintuitive given the normal notion up up/down/left/right.
What he seems to be commenting on, was the use of a dollar in "MS". And I agree with him (these things are becoming old, and don't help for anything), although I wouldn't say it that way.
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
The Footrat
Really thinking about getting one after Christmas.
Ice Window Manager is pretty good in this regard. Now I just wish app writers for X would take 2 seconds out to actually think about putting in keyboard shortcuts for applications to minimize mouse usage.
Of course you'd mention this after I switched to the Happy Hacker Keyboard (w/o NumLock key). =)
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
You can do everything without the mouse with fvwm2. And sure, the default themes are always ugly for some reason (the fvwm people seem to be into Barbie colors!?), but it's not that hard to make it an attractive wm.
Of course this is assuming that you can stand reading a 2 MB man page ;-P
I don't mind the occasional ACK, but I get worried when my hands start to NAK.
It is a woman's prerogative to change other people's minds.
twm. My friend doesn't even have a mouse attached anymore... he has keybindings or everything in twm... you just don't get the new "desktop" features.
But all of you people with the "my wrists hurt so I started standing on my head" stories, have you tried the Placebo Brand line of products? It will solve all of your problems. You see, medical science is only now beginning to discover that controlled studies involving double-blind trials are hogwash, essentially going to a lot of trouble for nothing, and masking some handy medicinal effects encountered in everyday situations.
It's so much better to ask one person what their experience was, one time, at one point in their life, hopefully when they were experimenting with a number of variables while their body was busy healing. And all of that sort of wisdom has been encapsulated in the Placeboard (pronounced pla-SEE-board) keyboard. Those with a bigger budget can also get the Placebowl (pronounced pla-SEE-bowl), a trackball inspired by AMF (it's the one with the three finger holes!) and the Placemat, a special ergonomically designed pad that keep food and other contaminants from creating too much mouse friction. (no, this one's pronounced PLACE-mat.) All of these are documented to have worked at least once for somebody.
Are you on an expense account? consider delaying to purchase their upcoming "YMMV" line.
IMHO, being able to bind arbitrary wm/shell commands to a key is an essential window manager feature (though there are some that don't have it -- blackbox comes to mind). Having tried blackbox, e, fvwm2, 4dwm (irix), and (briefly!) looking at windowmaker, I will fight the wm holy war under the banner of sawmill. ;) Being able to bind arbitrary lisp (including lisp to run shell commands) to keys is just _cool_ (even if I don't care for that ability in an editor).
I was pretty sure this was a Tom Christiansen post just by reading the subject---Tom's opinion stated as FACT. Fortunately, Tom, not everyone thinks like you and some people actually find Lynx's keyboard navigation easy to use.
Are you talking no mouse, or no pointing device at all? A friend of mine has a keyboard with a pretty decent touchpad built in. Since the touchpad and the keyboard have separate plugs, I don't see why it shouldn't work under Linux. If however, you're going for no pointing devices whatsoever, you're still going to have to drag something somewhere, no matter which WM you use - and likely, it'll be more repetitive and stressful on the hands then just grabbing the mouse.
There is one more thing I did want to pass along. I found that one thing that helps my wrists after a long day of various computer things is making sure that all my input hardware is good stuff. I'll probably get knee-jerk flamed for this, but Microsoft makes some of the best input hardware out there. This summer, I needed a new keyboard and mouse, and I picked up a Microsoft Natural and an Intellimouse, as well as a Sidewinder for gaming. Since then, no matter how many lines of code I;ve written, I can't think of a time when my wrists have even hurt. It's worth the money, trust me.
Stop bitching about how X Windows doesn't do *this* and *that*, and how "painful" it is for you to use a mouse. Get a good keyboard, mouse, monitor, and desk chair, and most of your problems will go away.
Still want just keyboard access? Use Windows -- you never need to use the mouse.
Well, several people have already mentioned that KDE is very keyboard-friendly, but I haven't seen anyone mention KHotKeys. With KHotKeys you can assign literally any action to any (non-used) key combination, that includes shell scripts, non-KDE programs, whatever. You can also switch to an already open window based on window name, class, etc. Together with kwmcom you can pretty much control your whole environment with the keyboard. All in all, a very useful program despite its 0.2 version number.
Chris
San Francisco values: compassion, tolerance, respect, intelligence
I use icewm and I haven't found anything in it that I can't easily do with the keyboard.
ctrl-esc = menu
atl-tab = switch tasks
alt-esc = lower window
ctrl-shift-esc = window list
atl-F5 = restore
alt-F7 = move
alt-F8 = resize
alt-F9 = minimize
alt-F10 = maximize
alt-F12 = roll up window
alt-F1 = raise window
alt-F3 = lower window
alt-F4 = close window
There's more key bindings but those get 90% of my work done. On top of that, it is a lean and stable wm.
Alex, I'll take keybindings not used by Emacs for $400....
"Ironically, one of the large reasons I use Windows 98 is because of it's kerboard-friendly design. The keyboard shortcuts are almost universal in every application."
If you're talking about standardization of keybindings throughout apps, yes, MS probably does handle that well (I don't use many Win* apps, so I don't know). The thing about *nix, though, is that you can bind many, many *more* things to keys.
For the past few months I've had to spend a lot of time (at work) in NT; before I always used *nix. Even now, I spend most of my time in Exceed. But this time with NT has been an excercise is frustration, trying to get the functionality I'm used to out of the interface. I've finaly arrived at something almost acceptable (mostly by getting rid of explorer shell and replacing it with a batch file, and using exceed/X for everything that doesn't *require* NT), but I've come to the conclusion that there is simply a lot of UI functionality/flexibility that simply doesn't exist in win* (even with things like litestep -- a shell replacement).
But on linux, running sawmill, I can bind WHATEVER I WANT to a key. Lisp code, scripts, commands, etc. I have hooks that will run lisp code to set up a window based on my prefs when it starts, multiple desktops (which one can have in win, with litestep, I know), etc. The only thing I'm missing is drag & drop (which evidently gnome/kde have, but I don't care about) and unified keybindings accross apps. That latter would be nice, but I have something better -- a command line and a shell designed to make the most of it (with pipes, back-ticks, etc.).
This is why I simply don't understand attempts to make linux more windows-like, or things like gnome & kde. I see the linux interface as an effective superset of win*. Sure, there are documentation problems, learnability problems (I refuse to say user-friendly) and the like, but not interface problems.
Naturaly, read this with the disclaimer that I'm a win* newbie and that I'm in exactly the reverse situation of all those people out there moving from win* to linux.
Use w3m instead -- it gets this right. Since it also handles tables and frames properly there's not much reason for keeping lynx around any more.
Window Maker will let you assign hot key combinations for specific windows. Currently you can have up to ten. You choose what the hot key meta will be in the configuration and can then assign or deassign (is that a word?) the hot status to windows on the fly. I have the Left Windows and Alt combination as my meta and numbers 1-0 as the hot keys. So I can make a shortcut to this Netscape window with: Windows+Escape: enter window commands menu O, right cursor: select options S a few times, return: choose a shortcut Then if I switch to a new window with Windows+Tab and perhaps change workspaces with Windows+{8,9,0.-,=} (please don't ask why I chose these keys) I can instantly get this window back with Windows+Alt+1 - just in time to hit submit. Of course, this being Netscape, I have to reach for the mouse to find the submit button...
Official Year 2000 statement: s/y/k/g
This is one window manager I know that allows you to configure practically any key and button to do practically anything (yes, they are working on that coffee-making function, too
AfterStep is not easy to configure so you'd have to spend a considerable amount of time learning it but once you are through I am sure you can just throw away this grey little rodent of yours. Give it a try in any case. URL: http://www.afterstep.org.
Disclaimer: yes, I am involved with AfterStep so my opinions are biased.
I currently use the CVS version of KDE 2, and just recently Matthias Ettrich implemented this into KWin. it currently has a keybinding to toggle it on/off which is configurable, but currently defaults to F12, and you use your arrow keys to move around, control moving it one pixel at a time, and alt moving it faster. Currently both the space bar and the enter key both produce left clicks, but the right click will be implemented soon.
www.pckeyboard.com
I have one and never lift my fingers from the board.
And since no one has mentioned the BWMFH, I thought that I would offer a few words of support for CDE. It is actually quite good in terms of being fully keyboard-navigable. It is just the apps that break that down.
I was experiencing similar symptoms a few months ago. On the recommendation of two colleagues, I bought a Kinesis keyboard; a refurbished Essential model. They're sort of pricey and take a week or so to get used to, but they're definitely worth it. Just a thought.
I don't know how pratical this would be for this situation, but it does seem to me that trackballs are nicer on hands that mice -- you don't have to move your wrist at all. Perhaps I should convince the trackball module I rescued from an integrated keyboard/trackball combo I traded for some junk a while back to work properly. Then I'd have three major classes of pointing devices on my desk -- a mouse for my primary workstation, a touchpad for my secondary (I was too cheep to get a monitor/keyboard/mouse switch and settled for a monitor/keyboard switch, and I had the touchpad floating around gathering dust anyway), and a trackball thrown in for variety. (I do like the touchpad, though, and would use it more if it had three buttons. The best part of mine is that tapping once on it will single click -- some notebook touchpads I've seen don't do that, and it drives me nuts.)
A good ergonimic keyboard with mouse control on the keys is the Datahand. Check out http://www.datahand.com/
Right is the opposite of left.
Left is the opposite of arrived.
Arrived is the opposite of devirrA.
Devirra is a funny spelling for a little girl.
Isn't that special?
twm is highly configable and I have used it without a mouse in the past without too much trouble.
ebw
I guess this proves that even a keyboard app can be misdesigned. If Netscape is a Winix app, does that mean lynx is a DOSix app?
would such a thing be possible?? I was reading all of the user friendly cartoons, and was wishing there was a hotkey to go to the next cartoon. I could also think of a few other sites where being able to define hotkeys in html would be useful. For example... right now I'm typing this comment, it would be nice to be able to hit Ctrl-Shift-P or something to hit preview... Obviously, it would be difficult to come up with a hotkey scheme that would not conflict with any browser/os/wm/whatever, but it sure would be nice...
I don't happen to have a reference handy, but it
is my understanding that under the X/Open specification, a window manager is not allowed to
intercept any keystrokes that could be used by an application, that any window manager that has a bunch of hotkeys is non-compliant.
This sort of compliance matters to me. There are obviously many circumstances in which hotkeys are desirable or necessary, but it would seem the spec would need to be changed to reflect this before everyone added a ton of buttons to their wm.
I use WMaker, all i have to do to launch netscape (DEFAULT configuration) is F12-7 down arrows, one right arrow, four down arrows. if i make my programmable keyboard MCK-142 to memorize this then it's one keystroke.
unfortunately WM is not documented completely as of key bindings.
I use fvwm primarily mouselessly. I have all of the window manager commands set to be keyboard accessible, and have them within reach by using strange key combinations. fvwn lets you bind menus and such to combinations like left-alt right-alt and such, which I have done (Alt-Alt both ways, some Shift-shift and shift-alt).
Mainly I use the mouse to use netscape (because I don't have a mouse-free graphical browser) and to do window manager stuff while using netscape, since my hand in already on the mouse. The only thing I find annoying about this is moving windows, which takes a bunch of key strokes to move across the screen, but can't really be helped.
I love the marble as well...it has saved me all sorts of pain. The are some initial precision problems, but I'm as precise with the marble as I am with a mouse after practice, and I'm almost as fast...the speed may just never come. Like others have said, though, the ball and internal contacts needs to be cleaned from time to time, but this only takes about 30 sec in my experience. BTW, the center mounted track balls are great, too...I used one for several years, and I was very happy with it, too.
>>I've had to wear a split on my wrist, due to an old injury. . .commited in my reckless youth.
Why do I get an image of some horny teen sitting on the toilet with a Penthouse across his lap and his mom banging on the bathroom door saying, "Are you ok?? What are doing in there??"
But then again, I may be projecting my own adolescent experience onto this quote...
When i first compiled sawmill, I was amazed at the amount of keybindings a user could do. you can do everything from launching just about any program to minimizing/maximizing/shading/hiding/etc...
One thing i noticed, that I liked, was the ability not to only be able to bind the "customize" but i could bind each sub-category of "customize" to a different key stroke.
This isn't the only area that sawmill allows binding to sub-categories...many other's are allowed also.
Sawmill even allows bindings to some things i wouldn't have expected to see, like compile, make, and tar. Nevertheless, they're handy and I am happy.
There's a very old debate about whether modeern keyboards have caused pain because in the old days when people have to use typewriters and old IBM "BANG ME" keyboards, this never ever happened! and your theory explains why... in order to use these typewriters and keyboards, you would have to bang REAL hard and that kinda strengthens your fingers and hands instead of weakens it.
Of course after you bang the keyboard for a while you'd get tired and yor finger will take a break.
A big criteria for my selection of WMs was the whole keyboard control thing. With sawmill, the configuration of "hotkeys" is simple and flexible. My options are open enough that I can use emacs with no conflicts (at least, in my regular usage...I'm sure I override *some* esoteric emacs command). I do have to use the mouse from time to time to go fetch a window that gets placed "behind" the gnome panel, but there may even be ways to fetch that window without using the mouse...I haven't investigated that yet.
There doesn't seem to be any consistent way of doing menus. I don't mean shortcuts such as Ctrl+O, I mean keyboard accelerators to open the menu and chose an item (eg. under M$ Windoze, "Alt+F, O" to open a file).
I'm not entirely familiar with X programming, but to me it looks like the onus is on the applications programmer to implement the menus in a manner that is consistent with other people (obviously under M$ Windoze the applications programmer has to remember to insert the "&" character to setup a menu mneumonic, but even so, the user can still ALWAYS access the menu with Alt, or Alt+Space and the arrow keys). Look at Netscape under X... pain in the arse to use with just a keyboard.
The other big problem is the lack of consistency with other key bindings, such as mneumonics on window controls/widgets, tabbing around a window/dialog, multi and group selecting, and opening a drop list (F4 under M$).
Linux has many users that are very wary of GUI's and so it comes as a great suprise to me that X isn't more keyboard friendly.
The lack of keyboard friendliness of Netscape under M$ Windoze was what first tempted me to use IE (many times a day I visited a web-site where the login button was a picture, and under Netscape I couldn't tell whether I had tabbed to it or not. IE on the otherhand puts a box around picture links, so you know where you are.)
On a side note: somebody pointed out to me the otherday about the benefits of Emacs and VI (and presumably shells like bash). Apparently the cursor keys are really bad to use (is that because they put one hand in a strange position, or the back and forth motion from home position?), but Emacs/VI had other key bindings in the home position to do the same thing.
I have a friend at MIT who swares by NAWM, a layer in addition to whatever window manager you run that can be set up to do all sorts of nice keyboard shortcuts. A Development Version and Stable Version are available. All the documentation is in the man page.
I read about this somewhere (probably in a company ergonomics pamphlet or something), but the claim was that you can help alleviate a lot of repetetive stress by changing the height of your chair, or more generally, the relative height of the mouse/keyboard, throughout the day by as little as a few inches. Apparently, this changes the angle-of-attack that your wrist has to work at and decreases the perceived repetetiveness of the actions. I don't know about all the physiology behind the idea, but it certainly seems to help. I've made it a habit to raise and lower my chair from time to time and that has helped reduce the amount of pain or stiffness I build up during the day.
Ah, you know the UNIX purists think silly WMs and GUIs in genereral are for wimps. They grew up using only the keyboard and they are still not used to this mouse thing. I am so comfortable using a mouse. I wouldn't have it any other way. Let them type everything out at the prompt.
NAWM: Not a Window Manager
It is not a full window manager, and is intended to run alongside other window managers (although some people I know run it alone). Basically, it takes a config file of keybinding and sits in the X keyboard event stream and if any of those bindings comes up, it does some action. The actions are highly configureable, from executing a program to moving the window 5 pixels to the left to some complex macro that revereses the position of two windows. Basically, any action that can be formally described can be done.
The only weakness I have found (the only time I take my hands off the keyboard) is for Netscape. I have not yet found a solution for that.
NAWM is kinda hard to find, I've never actually seen it packaged. I found the src online once, downloaded each file and compiled it myself. If you really can't find it, email me and I'll see if I can drag the src out of my backups.
--Nick
There's more to hydration than you realize. Dr. F. Batmanghelidj was at one time held prisoner in Iran. He was about to be executed, but they kept him around because he was usefull for treating other prisoners. A prisoner came up to him with severe abdominal pain from a peptic ulcer. Lacking traditional "medicines", Dr. B. perscribed two glasses of water. The pain disappeared in eight minutes.
From WaterCure.com:
AMAZING SECRETS FOR HEALTH AND WELLNESS
Cure # 1: Water prevents and cures heartburn.
Cure # 2: Water prevents and cures arthritis.
Cure # 3: Water prevents and cures back pain.
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Cure # 5: Water prevents and cures migraines.
Cure #6: Water prevents and cures colitis.
Cure # 7: Water and salt prevents and cure asthma.
Cure # 8: Water prevents and cures high blood pressure.
Cure # 9: Water prevents and cures early-adult-onset diabetes.
Cure # 10: Water lowers blood cholesterol.
Cure # 11: Water Cures Depression, Loss of Libido, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Lupus, Multiple Sclerosis, Muscular Dystrophy.
For explanations of how water can be used to treat all these conditions you'll have to buy one of his books, Your Body's Many Cries For Water, availible from Amazon, Barnes and Noble or from watercure.com. The recommended amount of water is 1/2 your weight in ounces every day. I way 180 pounds, so I should be drinking 90 ounces of water a day.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Though definitely not one of the more popular window managers, qvwm would work (relatively) nicely for this application. It's claim to fame (shame?) is that it mirrors, as closely as possible, the Win9x shell. Thus, you could install it and be ready to go if you know all of your Windows keyboard combos.
It also has the ability to make hotkeys, which some of the other window managers support (in varying degrees.) Set up your hotkeys and there's basically nothing you can't do quickly--er, unless it's netscape (I don't think netscape for linux will do the tab+space navigation style that some other browsers do.)
If you're interested, it's at http://www.qvwm.org/
It's pretty simple to install, and doesn't spooge files everywhere.
A demonstration of the keyboard's effectiveness: every so often, I have to type on a regular-style keyboard. My wrists start to ache after about 5 minutes!
Also, for a mouse replacement, consider a wacom tablet. Not quite as easy to use as a mouse, but much less wrist strain, in my experience.
Get the kinesis!
-Marshall Spight
Maybe one way to help fix some of the problems discussed would be for some sort of a standard as to key bindings? Also I recently posted a piece on osOpinion.com about a similar subject to this and someone sent me an e-mail afterwords about how he is working on a wm that is based on vi keyboard commands. Now talk about being independent of the rodent, well accept for netscape of course. I hope that Mozilla is a lot better at keyboard control than netscape is. Talk to ya later, Joey Bahr jeb2122@ksu.edu
The Interfaces Chair and Keyboard System is a great way to get the chair/ smaller keyboard combo, but it takes some getting used to.
Also, I really like MouseMitt Keyboarders. I don't use them all the time, but when my wrists start to ache they help alleviate the pain, plus they are very portable.
Hope this helps.
I think the X mouse wheel scroll page will help you out.
That's because you are bound by nostalgia.
Learn to use the new tools that NT provides instead of spending countless hours window-shopping, trying to turn NT into X. It cannot be done. If you want X, you know where to find it.
Keep your old tools. Use the new ones. Also, get GNU bash for NT. Do this, and you shall be one with the tao.
-k. ^-^ ^D
I use the Goldtouch mouse and keybord as well. The keyboard is split by a ball joint, and you can tilt it any which way. There is no number keypad on the right, so that you can have the mouse closer in to your comfort range. Instead, there is a function lock key that lets you use uiojkl etc. as a keypad. The delete button has also been moved to the lower left. Takes some getting used to, but quite lovely after that. The mouse is fantastic. It is very comfortable and responsive. The finger and forearm pain I used to have has never returned since using this mouse.
If GeoWorks had the alt-key-opens-the-menu thing, then it's possible that GEOS did too. GEOS was the precursor to GeoWorks that ran on Commodore 64's. But if you're going to go that far back, Amiga's and atari st's might have had this feature too.
w3m does that too. w3m + large rxvt = gooood http://ei5nazha.yz.yamagata-u.ac.jp/~aito/w3m/eng/
ObLinux: the gpm program was very useful in that it allowed the glidepoint and a conventional mouse to be used, something that Windows never did.
Alps stopped making this keyboard but I'm sure there are alternatives.
I've been working with an IBM thinkpad for awhile and I'm addicted to the finger mouse. It's this little analog joystick between the g and h buttons. I found it to be even better than keyboard shortcuts as it requires no reaching. the right and left mouse buttons are a bit below the space bar. I've found it incredibly frustrating to use anything else because of the constant changing of grips. If anyone can find a full sized key board with a finger mouse like this buy it and give it to me. I prefer it to a touchpad or track ball by a great margin. You ppl should really try it.
"most men are given an equal measure of life, and most men watch it slowly trickle away. But if you can summon it up in an instant, you can accomplish something remarkable." -Sean Connery-
Having been a long time DOS and then Windows power user ( if there is such a thing), I've seen the transition from speedy and efficient dos apps to multi-tasking visual apps so i'd like to offer my take on the merits of a GUI.
:). At this moment in computer time, what windows has done well and what X lacks ( huh, huh, he said xlax. ;) is make the (G)raphical work in harmony with the UI. When I switched to linux/X as my primary OS with RedHat 5.2, my biggest frustration was a noticeable reduction in operating efficiency. My complaints were not about using shortcuts to maximize/minimize windows or running new programs, most or all X window managers I've tried are quite proficient at handling those tasks. However, my complaints came from navigating in the active window, whatever application that may be. The most noticeable aspects I miss are; a) typing the first letter of a word in a long list box and having the list box move to the first occurrence, b) pgup and pgdn in list boxes, and c) Alt-downarrow to expand drop down list boxes. The X apps I've tried that handle those key bindings are slim to none meaning I can not complete the task at hand without using my mouse, which is quite frustrating to say the least.
... and still have most of it left." Not I
I like a GUI primarily for its (G)raphical aspect, I like being able to get a snapshot of everything happening with a single glance and I especially like progress meters and gauges (which also reads: yes I now use windowmaker and am running every system dockapp available
What this has lead me to do now is become very proficient with what makes xNIX really shine, e.g. the scripting capabilities of my shell, pipes, and the whole philosophy of linking many small, single use and efficient programs together to perform complicated tasks. After spending months figuring out what the hundreds of all those tiny little programs that RedHat has installed by default are, I am more efficient now than I've ever been. This has also resulted in the reversal of my problem when I'm forced back onto a windows machine, I find I am far less efficient once again. So now the X apps I run are mostly informative or web browsing and all my real work gets done at the command line.
At this point I think it should be noted that all this has been fine for me, I'm and enthusiast and a power user and the learning curve has been, although frustrating at times, mostly interesting and enlightening. However, there is no way in hell someone like my father, the hardened executive who also happens to be in a position that approves and procures IT, would stand to deal with these things for more than five minutes. I think it should also be noted to all you X hackers and GUI builders out there that focusing on the usability of your apps may be just the key to bringing over the next wave of windows users to linux. By that I mean reasonably savvy computer enthusiasts who are just now becoming frustrated with this mess that is windows.
Anyway, this is huge and i'm babbling so i'll just say it's my $0.04.
strain
"I started off with nothing
When's someone going to come up with a pointing device that figures out where my eyes are pointing? A pair of specs with clever lasers ought to be able to pull this off relatively easily, right?
My Canon Elan IIe camera can shift between three focus points and a shutter test based on my focus within the viewframe. Why can't my PC do the same?
JA
www.infogrip.com This keyboard uses chord typing so you can type everything with ONE HAND... and have the other hand on the mouse. I do not have one of these but I'd Really like to try it out.
whada dumbass
There's a very old debate about whether modeern keyboards have caused pain because in the old days when people have to use typewriters and old IBM "BANG ME" keyboards, this never ever happened! and your theory explains why... in order to use these typewriters and keyboards, you would have to bang REAL hard and that kinda strengthens your fingers and hands instead of weakens it.
Of course after you bang the keyboard for a while you'd get tired and yor finger will take a break.
I type all day long and used to type fast 15+ hours a day, bad posture, and i never had any pain or anything like that. it kinda explains it now, because I am a strong person and most people complaining about these things are usually skinny little geeks.
As soon as opera comes out for Linux, use it (it'll be out any day now). I know you're used to free/open software, but Opera really rocks - you can navigate without ever using your mouse, it's faster than Netscape, & has lots of very cool & useful features.
I've been a Window Maker devotee for many moons now, and I'm a big fan of the ease with which you can designate keyboard shortcuts for all kinds of things. Using the kb I can navigate the root menu, shade/unshade windows, toggle thru my desktops, alt+tab switch, F3 (dunno why I picked it but there we are) to execute an arbitrary command, iconify, yada yada yada. I agree that Netscape is the trickiest app to use mouseless.
All these things can be done in other WMs to be sure, but it's slick with Window Maker. 'vi ~/GNUstep/Library/Windowmaker/menu'
Mice?! We don't need no stinkin mice!
The window manager scwm is sufficently powerful that one can write a configuration file for it making the mouse superfluous.
Slashdot is currently performing an interview with the technical director of the National Federation for the Blind. They are the folks suing AOL for non-compliance with the ADA. If anybody would know how to use a computer without a mouse, it would be a blind person.
Maybe some of the discussion there is relevent, and maybe some of the blind people in that discussion would like to contribute to this discussion.
--
HOWTO get better dates on slashdot
Unfortunately, you're kind of missing the point. I can tell you that FVWM2 works great without a mouse (which it does -- I rarely use a mouse to do WM-related things -- and I only do because I find it more convenient to do those things with mouse, not because I need to). The trouble is all the other X programs.
Putting in good keyboard shortcuts, or better yet, shortcut configurability, in a program is a big PITA and most X applications lack them (speaking of core X11 programs and X11 contribs). Some have them that aren't properly functional.
Long ago I gave up any hope of mouseless operation of X because of all the non-Xterm programs I run. One thing I'll give Mootif is that in general the GUI you get with Mootif apps is more keyboard-accessible than regular X Toolkit or Xlib stuff.
Anyway, most modern WMs have keyboard acceleration control and provide enough backend programmability that you can make your WM do things you want. You just have to be willing to spend some time configuring... But the applications...
For ergo keyboards, I recommend the Kinesis (http://www.kinesis-ergo.com/) - some of my friends who have more major RSI problems have found it helps a LOT. I have minor problems which are pretty much completely eliminated by it.
;)
A bit pricey at about $300, so don't be too shocked.
My window manager of choice is WindowMaker. With WindowMaker you can make hotkeys for whatever you want. I hate using my mouse (of the few things I like about Win9x is that you can ignore your mouse most of the time) and I've made hotkeys for the functions I use the most. I can press alt+tab to switch between windows, alt+ctrl and left or right to switch between workspaces. It rocks.
"Gigantor the space-age robot. His power is in your hands. Gigantor the space-age robot he's at your command."I tried to learn to use a Dvorak a few months ago, The main thing that stopped me was that I using a Dvorak at home during my free time and a Qwerty at work. :(
Very hard to switch between them when you use keyboards a lot. Esp. when speed is an issue. Can't really afford to go back to 2 finger typing.
Might just have to get one for work too. Hrmm Confuse the buggery out of anyone trying to use my PC hehehe :)
Then again a similar thing happened when I converted to using the mouse with my left hand, so that I can use the number pad at the same time. Pisses me off! people use the my main PC for 5 mins once a week and they cry about how I've set it up. shesh! Let's see, I ONLY use it for 40 hours a week, guess I don't get a say :(
Has anyone else tried a left hand mouse even if you are right-handed? I seemed to pick it up fairly quickly in the two weeks or so I tried it before being force to change back.
Get a nice classic IBM PS2 KB (the 5-7 lbs ones) for $75. Learn all the keystrokes to get around applications (configure similar features to act the same in other apps if need be). Then only use your mouse for moving windows fast. Your wrists will thank you more, and you won't have to look silly with one of those ergo keyboards.
my personal recurrent rsd is from clicking. bad clicking! bad! bad!
and trackballs are a pain, too. it's hard to find one that's the right size for my hand [being a woman, i have smaller hands. i'd be just as comfortable rolling a bowling ball about my desk as using a full-size trackball]
I'm a big fan of trackpoint keyboards (the ones with the little joystick amidst 'g', 'h', and 'b'). They are available for desktop machines at major on-line stores. I'm told that Adesso makes an MS-ergo-style keyboard with a trackpoint-like thing in the center as well. Of course, none of this is guaranteed to save your wrists.
They're awesome. They rock. AND they look cool.
http://www.mmm.com/ergonomics/akt200.html
this is the best keyboard tray i have ever used.
the 3M-AKT200
it's is full featured and a very stable platform. the engineering is also first rate and the best feature is the tilt adjustment capability with great mouse location for either hand. the tilt adjustment allows you to place the keyboard sloping down and away from you. this allows you to keep you wrists in their naturally neutral position while working.
it is amazing how many keyboards and trays ignore this critical angle. it is a bit pricey (~$300), but no more so than one visit to the orthopedic surgeon for a consultation.
it has help me immensely with my pain (I don't have it anymore). i swear by it!!!
one thing, mounting it requires that you have a 18' wide, flat, unobsturcted and drillable surface under your desk.
enjoy!
I'm currently without a mouse on my machine - one feature which makes the system usable is the "keyboard mouse" available in windoze under accessibility options (why I'm forced to use windoze at all at the moment is another story). Basically you can just navigate using the keypad, using the /*- keys to select which button you want to hit, and then '0' to click. It's pretty easy to use, and I'd love to have a way to make X do the same - window cycling doesn't often cut it, when there are things like checkboxes to select. Any ideas?
I bought the Crystal Trackball from CompUSA, and it's been working fine on X (although I once-in-a-while get a "protocol error" on my console log.) I like it because I can't see very well, and find it difficult to "mouse around." I got the Logitech Marble on my 95/NT dual boot at work first, because there is this one NT screen that's a pain in the ass to work with, but I have to use the darn thing repeatedly. Positioning the pointer in a fixed location and then tapping the left mouse button for each invocation of the screen was a pain until I got the Marble. I actually like the CompUSA Crystal Trackball better for Linux at home, because the ball is very large and the pointer tends to move more quickly on Linux. Also, it's 'way cool to see those red and green LED's show through the clear plastic.
Frankly, though, I believe X needs a WM that *never* requires a mouse except for drawing and area boxing. There should be an equivalent to Microsoft MouseKeys on X for this purpose.
Failing that, the trackball seems to be the way to go for me.
--------------Rev. C.C.Chips---------------- For the real truth, visit
With mouseless movement via keyboard mouse emulation you don't have fine-grained pointer control. It's extremely awkward to move around. It's like using arrow keys instead of a mouse to play a fast-action game like xbill.
Omelet, eggs, break.
Either you want a pointing tool or you dont. If you're trying to do anything graphics or requiring fine cursor control, without a mouse, rotsa ruck.
You can actually get by pretty well doing graphics manipulation with key-mousing, but you have to be careful and slower with the movement. It also depends on the speed and acceleration of the key-mousing function. (This is based on my experience using Win32 MouseKeys in Photoshop.)
Usually you want a medium-fast acceleration with a slow speed, so that you can still make fine movements when needed, but can also move the cursor around the screen. As you get more used to it, you can up the speed.
Look, if you want to be able to make rapid and accurate pointer movements, a la XBill, you're not in Ask Slashdot asking how to be mouse-free. It don't work that way. Otherwise, you keep the mouse tucked under the keyboard drawer and only pull it out for just such an occasion.
Beyond key-mousing, there are also features in Gnome/E and FVWM2 also I believe, where you can use M-TAB to iterate through the list of open windows, much like MSWin. Some are current-screen aware and some aren't, so thats a caveat if you are using virtdesks.
Furthermore, I'd estimate that only half of the problem lies in WMs being too mousey; the other half lies in X-heavy apps (like Netscape) and X itself being too mousey. Such is the world of GUI.
Romulus
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
I don't use the mouse at home much. I've configured icewm (also windowmaker) to switch virtual screens with alt-1/2/3/4/5 and use alt-tab to switch windows. But when I'm elsewhere and have to deal with icky windows applications, and start getting cramps, especially shoulder pain, I just switch the mouse to the left side until the right side is ok again. It's not that bad, you get used to using the mouse in the other hand pretty quickly, and giving your better arm the chance to rest every once in a while helps greatly in preventing any syndromes..
I hate hate hated mice. Mousing is painful. Click and drag is painful. A year ago, I put down the big money for a WACOM Intuos graphics tablet. Way way way easier to use. Extented work in Photoshop and GIMP no longer results in arm pains. Click-draging is as intuitive as drawing a line on paper.
The mouse now lies on the floor behind the computer, because the rare times I boot windoze, it gripes if I don't have a mouse plugged in, even if you also have another pointing device.
XFree86 supports all/most WACOM tablets, but gpm doesn't, last i checked. The protocol is known, so it shouldn't be all that hard to add.
-Philip
One thing that I haven't seen anyone suggest is maybe a keyboard with a built-in pointing device. Most common on laptops (for obvious reasons) but also available on full-sized keyboards are trackpoints and touchpads. Usually the trackpoint is located right on the keyboard and the touchpad right below it. With either the travel distance is much less than out to a mouse beside the keyboard, in fact with a trackpoint you don't even need to move your hands off the home row! For the efficiency-minded who are still forced to use a pointing device it may be the best solution. Then again, I also play Quake 3 with my laptop's touchpad :)
I have used a keyboard including an IBM (tm) Trackpoint (tm) and I must say I am very pleased. Test show that you are fastest with a Trackpoint. You are faster than any available Trackpad or mouse.
I only wish IBM would build a keyboard with three buttons and in ergo-style.
Anyway I would not try to playgames with that thing, though I was able to play quake a little bit. It is the best tool for campers or snipers, since the precision of the IBM Trackpoints is outstandingly good.
- Holle
Check out their site: http://www.coolkeyboards.com
I can't comment on mouse-optional WMs. However, I think I can contribute motivation: my (Windowns NT Server) mouse driver can report the physical distance the mouse covers. My mouse covers, on average, _about_1.5_MILES_a_day_ while programming, confined within a 4x6" mouse pad. Scary, eh?
I use Icewm quite easily on my 486 without a mouse (i have a mouse on the system, but it is a difficult to use "nipple") It will automatically assign the start button to the windows key if you have one and enable that option via the config file. (i here there is a graphical config tool out there written in perlgtk). It has alt-tab, and numerious ones for windowmanagement assigned from alt-[f5-f12] -- Eric Windisch
If your hands ache right now, I would suggest curtailing your activities immediately. I'm not doctor, but you seem to be in a prime setup for a repetitive strees injury (RSI). There's plenty of folks like that here at MIT, and it ain't pretty. Hopefully The Twiddler will ameliorate your symptoms ...
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Anyway, here is a link to the product page.
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
Do away with the keyboard as well >;)
It'd make for a noisy environment, but it's be interesting. You could be typing into one window and "chatting" in another (and swap on command)
It certainly won't do for a graphics, but for most other applications I'd imagine it being a boon.
IceWM has a huge number of keybindings. Now all i have to do is get those stoopid X applications to support the keyboard properly!
Why on earth would pressing a letter key on a GNOME menu change the label for that menu, instead of activating the menu item with that key underlined? Ridiculous.
Nat Lanza pointed out that Adesso make some keyboard with nice pointers, but here's my question:
Does anyone make a keyboard that has the following two characteristics?
1) Built-in trackpoint type erasor pointer, and
2) clicky, mechanical keystrokes?
If so, I would pay well for it. Up to, say, $100, which is high for a "regular" keyboard (even with a biult-in pointer) and way low for most of the *serious* ergonomic ones (As opposed to simple split arangements).
I'll even pay a finders fee ($10 fair?) to the first person who can send me information which leads to the arrest and capture of an appropriate 'board.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I've given this lots of thought and keyboard navigation is one of the main reason that I'm not using Linux full-time now. Great Keyboard navigation is so important to IS pros and coders because it's essential in attaining great Flow - the feeling that your machine is a living extension of your thoughts or creativity.
I've found a really cool app called Quickkeys by CE Software (http://www.cesoftware.com). Quickkeys is only available for Windows and Mac but I'd love to see it on Linux - Hello!! Anyone from CE Soft reading this?
Firstly, I think that it's essential to be able to define the scope of keyboard shortcuts. Some bindings should be system-wide while others should be application specific. Having the ability to define a keybinding's scope also allows you to have the sanest keybindings possible - for example Crtl+n in your newsreader should be "new mail" whereas it should mean "new folder" in your file manager. Sane, application-specific keybindings make being able to remember the combos a lot easier allow you to incorporate them into your muscle memory more quickly.
Setup:
Good resolution is essential (minimum usable res. is 1024 x 768 IMHO)
Ergonomic keyboards are wonderful once you get used to them.
You'll never be able to get away from the mouse completely - getting a good one makes mousing bearable.
Remap the control key!! - I don't know how it ever got stuck down under the shift key. Switching Control with Caps-Lock is the best solution I've found - The Microsoft "kernel toys" package lets you do this on Windows 9x.
Use GNU bash as your command line interpreter.
General Navigation: (Scope: Universal)
The best part of my setup is that I've bound the arrow keys to a control key combo UNIVERSALLY which means while writing text or code I never have to reach for the arrow keys. So...
Left = Ctrl + j
Up = Ctrl + k
Down = Ctrl + l
Right = Ctrl + ;
Home = Ctrl + h
End = Crtl + '
I've also got modifier keys bound so that by hitting the Alt key with my thumb while I'm moving with the Ctrl keys I can move right and left by word and up and pageup and pagedown. For example - If I want to move right one word at a time then I do a ctrl+alt+; The shift key can also be incorporated to be able to move and select text without thinking about it and without moving from the home row (yeah!). The best part about these bindings is that because they are universal they work everywhere (in dialog boxes, text files, etc. etc)
Applications (Scope: Application)
here are some of my favorite (and most used) keybindings for apps:
Internet Explorer Ctrl+O pops me up to the address field which is a huge improvement over the "open dialog" because you can edit mistakes on the fly (how many times have you typed "blah.co" and then had to reach for the mouse ? :) Combined with the arrow key bindings above make bringing up a website a breeze (even with all the typos :)
:)
Windows+F6 to F12 keys are all bound to my favorite sites (/. is, of course, Win+F6
Outlook 98 Crtl+y is bound to the "go to folder dialog box" which selects the folder names as you type (brilliant!).
Ctrl+m is bound to move mail item to a specific folder it works the same as the above and there's never any dragging items from the inbox to folder and, therefore, no mouse movement.
So here's what I think is wrong with keybindings on Linux:
Netscape Alt- based shortcuts (what's up with that? - ugh!)
Inability to define scope of keybinding (i.e.global vs. application)
Hassle to setup keybindings (find the config file, learn the syntax etc....)
Switching between apps is a pain in all WM except KDE which copies Win95 (they really did a great job of alt+tab in windows)
:)
ok this post is getting way too long
I haven't used the mouse in ctwm for a while.
You need to configure it properly for keybindings though.
I can post my config in a while.
I've been having the same problem. . . My solution is still just a pipe dream, but for what it's worth:
I'd like to see somebody hack together a utility that does "Dynamic Hotkey Allocation"; thatmakes note of all the active controls in a window or page and assigns keystroke combinations to them--according to configurable prefs, of course!
As long as there was one meta-key that could be stroked to show little pop-up flags next to each control, labeled with the "hotkey" allocated to that control, your hands would never have to leave the keyboard again!
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Even if I were to feel that a given Microsoft product might perform some function better than a corresponding piece of free software, I would choose the free software for the following reason:
1. I am unwilling to use any software in a manner inconsistent with its licensing, especially for business purposes. This is both for legal reasons and for reasons of "personal integrity" if you will.
2. I am unwilling to pay Microsoft for their software. I am not aware of any Microsoft software that I can use for free that does not require Microsoft Windows, and I am unwilling to purchase that or purchase a computer that comes bundled with Microsoft Windows.
It appears to me that Microsoft has an agenda to insinuate their products and protocols so thoroughly into the established practice of computer usage that it becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to interact with other computer users without using Microsoft software. I find this scenario absolutely repellent, and therefore refuse to give any money whatsoever to Microsoft, for fear that it would go to support this repellent future. Therefore, my morals compel me to reject Microsoft software as dangerous to my future livelihood.
I encourage others to consider a similar course of action.
I run it at home (Linux) and at work (HP-UX) nearly without problems. A friend of mine uses it as well (Solaris).
Try Scwm. Not only does it let you do everything with the keyboard, it also allows you to bind keystrokes to synthetic mouse events so you can avoid using the rodent even in programs that would otherwise require it.
Take charge of your window management. Learn some lisp, install Sawmill, and any time there is something you don't like you can write some code to add a feature.
For an example of a potential mouse replacement, read this article from ABCNEWS.
This won't work for those whose left hands are severely uncoordinated, but try it for more than a few hours; it will probably feel better after some practice.
Many have posted that a trackball is more ergonomic than a mouse. I agree completely, and wouldn't give up my Logitech Marble FX without a fight. But the original question was about window managers, so I'll share my thoughts. I've used a bunch of wm's, including fvwm, AfterStep, WindowMaker, Enlightenment, and olvwm, and it's that last one I would suggest. The Open Look virtual window manager has its roots in the Open Look vs. Motif wars, a time when apps were written with the platform's prevalent wm in mind. And since it began its life as a commercial product, it has a lot of the polish that all-open-source projects have lacked, since the quality of Open Look could potentially have made or broken big deals for Sun. Anyway: 1. it's very easy to bind keys to common functions. This statement in your ~/.Xdefaults set up LeftAlt+Tab to do a Windows-like next-window function: olvwm.KeyboardCommand.NextWindow: Alt_L+Tab There are many more functions that can be bound in this manner... 2. it's menus are fully keyboard-navigable. If you bind a key to open up a window's menu, you can use the arrows and Enter to navigate it and select your choice, or hit Esc to cancel it. 3. it's *virtual desktop* is keyboard-navigable. Using the Windows key as a modifier, the arrow keys swap between the different virtual desktops. Or, for those using a mouse, simply focusing the root window makes the arrows alone act the same way. These and many more helpful facilities are documented in the portion of the olwm(1) and olvwm(1) manpages devoted to the subject of Mouseless Operation. Open Look may be a tad ugly, but it's easy to configure and very suited to mouseless use. MoNsTeR
The Command Line Interface. Kills mice dead.
Happy holidays,
Jack
Do you think that's air you're breathing?
I believe that the mouse is responsible for most of the injury. I also believe that the very nature of the X-pointer or windows-pointer is the root of the problem. The hand is required to control position precisely and make small movements while gripping the device: a formula for RSI. Trackballs, pads, and other gizmos help some, but they all cause my hand to hurt eventually. Unfortunately, attempts to use X or windows without a pointer have left me feeling even more disabled. My solution is a touch screen, which I use with a 15" LCD monitor. I find that I use the touch screen for focus, hyperlinks, buttons, and dialog, and only use the keyboard for scrolling and typing. Window position and size control are difficult, because the targets are too small to hit reliably. Some WMs are better than others, and anything with a big target option works great. Acrobat reader is touchscreen friendly, too, with the hand control and the wide scrollbars. The big drawback is the cost. The touchscreen sensor and controller are $300-400 for 15" size and they really only work well on LCD or flat monitors where the touch sensor can be close to the front surface of the monitor. A 15" LCD monitor with integrated touchscreen is about $1500 from Caltron and others. The Metro-X server supports a few common types and emulates one button. I actually use a small ALPS along with the touchscreen for cases where I need the other buttons. I find that using the touchscreen eliminates hand pain, even after hours of constant use.
Hmmm, I'd reserve judgement on this one - at work, I started using my left hand to move the mouse on the PC I have to my left, and continued using my right hand to move the mouse on the Sun in front of me (sometimes simultaneously :), and I found that my Quake accuracy was vastly reduced. Since only using my right hand, I've gone back to my previous levels of high accuracy .
Isn't there a very good reason that doctors stop you from writing with your 'off' hand if you injure your main hand? (Which escapes me at the moment, but strikes me as being relevant...)
NOTE: Don't try this without reading one of those books, as this isn't like normal streatching, but must be done gently.
Give a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day, but set him on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The easy way to avoid having to tab through
all the links is for the browser and pages
to support the LINK html tag, which almost
no one uses, and most browsers ignore (lynx
groks it). It allows authors to say "Here
is the next page in the sequence.", like
on user friendly. Except UF doesn't use
the tag, so I have to poke around the [LINK]s.
I miss HTML 2.0.
Currently, there are no Window Managers out there thay are particularly keyboard friendly. Even if there were, you then run into your X apps not being keyboard friendly. Some people keep suggesting alternate pointing devices than a mouse -- this is not an option for some people (visually impaired, etc). The largest problems are lack of focus management and control selection order. Having accelerators (keyboard shortcuts) is nice, but does not solve the overall problem.
While some people may debate it, or just plain scoff at the fact; Windows has by far the most keyboard friendly UI/shell you will ever use. MacOS is not far behind, but MS actually makes it more conducive to make your apps keyboard friendly as well in their APIs. "Keyboard friendliness" is also one of the requirements to getting the Win98/NT logo on a product.
What bugs me is when you have to use the keyboard to do basic window management things like ``send this window to the bottom of the stack.''
The thing that slows people down is not using the mouse, but switching between the keyboard and the mouse. If I have to hold down control-alt-shift-cokebottle while clicking, that's the worst of both worlds.
Personally, I like to use the keyboard only for text: entering, editing, and navigating through it. I like to use the mouse (and only the mouse, not some heinous keyboard/mouse combo) to do everything else, like moving things around and drawing pictures.
(Gimp's menus get more irritating by the day. You just can't use that program effectively without learning keyboard shortcuts, and that's really a shame.)
Don't believe that ``mouse == wrist damage.'' I messed up my wrists while hardly ever using a mouse, and things have gotten better since I started using the mouse more.
I've finally collected together various things I've written here on my wrist problems and put them on their own page, in case anyone's interested.
Regardless of the WM, not all the applications are design with the keyboard as the only input in mind. For that matter, if rejecting the mouse is not related to a hardware problem or limitation, why not just change the way to use the pointer?
XInput allows to use a digitizer tablet or a joystick to control the pointer, it's very useful and comfortable, and in the case of the tablet it's sometimes even faster to use than the mouse (and you can use the mouse at the same time, to boot). For this to work you just need to load the appropiate kernel drivers/modules, then configure the XInput modules and parameters in XF86Config, and it's done!
For info about this, check the kernel's menuconfig for a list of joysticks and tablets supported, and "man XF86Config" for the parameters and configuration of XInput.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Off the main topic, I know [sorry], but has anybody gotten this one working with all .four. buttons in X? I've got one w/ a PS/2 connector, and it seems to support three of the four buttons, if I start X with "ThinkingMousePS/2" [another 4-button kensington meese], and then switch to plain "PS/2" as the protocol, in the Pointer section of XF86Config. 'Course, what I actually did might not all have been necessary. [and there might have been a warm boot in there somewhere] Bottom line is I'd like to have at least three of the four buttons working consistently, if that's possible, and any info'd be appreciated.
billnye@tmbg.org
All I can say is, TWM rocks. If you want to go mouseless, just run twm and hack the config file to however you want it. I can cycle through my windows, close them, open them, hide them, just about anything from the keyboard alone. Hope this helps a bit... Oh and running Screen doesn't hurt either! The only downside I have found is that there is no pager in twm...
Ironically for the number of anti-mouse, anti-point-and-drool people out there, who like to yell how *nix is the end all and be all, it seems most are pretty tolerant of being unable to access many GUI applications without a mouse (lets be honest, there are many apps that simply don't work as text-only apps). Unfortunately most of this is due to a lack of standards in the widget libraries. Closest thing to a standard that exists is Motif and the Xaw libs. Motif, of course, is not free, so many people balk at it. And Xaw is quite limited, so many refuse to use it, too. Unfortunately the situation is getting worse. Now we have QT and GTK+ competing for space, and of course they don't work well together. But both tend to be quite keyboard friendly.
Window's strict user interface guidelines is the only reason you can pretty much expect to be able to navigate in all Win apps mouseless, just as you can expect CTRL-C to be copy, CTRL-V to be paste, F1 to be help, F3 to be search, etc.
As bas as MS Windows might be as an operating system, you have to admit that it's user interface is fairly efficient once you learn to navigate it without a mouse.
I didn't realize.
Enlightenment lets you assign so many shortcuts to so many things that I can effectively work without a mouse most of the day.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Some changes in your ergonomic "environment" can do wonders: three years ago I was eating ibuprofin every four hours, due to numbness in both hands, and stabbing pains in my right wrist, caused by constant typing. Thanks to an understanding safety officer at work, I got an ergonomic keyboard, glidepoint mouse, keyboard tray, and chair with arms that could be adjusted to support my elbows, taking the weight off of my shoulders. The result? After a couple of months most of the pain is gone. Today I can type all day long with no pain (okay, the tips of my fingers sometimes get numb from the glidepoint pad). These changes rescued my career; as an IS manager, I don't do anything that DOESN'T have to do with typing. I've since converted all 4 computers at home to the same keyboard: Cirque Wave Keyboard. Even my wife, who suffered from shoulder pain when at the keyboard, as improved substantially. Treat your body right, and it'll treat you right.. Hope this helps. - Orv -
w6bi@arrl.net
Does anyone make a keyboard that has the following two characteristics?
;-)
1) Built-in trackpoint type erasor pointer, and
2) clicky, mechanical keystrokes?
A small company that goes by the name of International Business Machines.
Not seven days ago, I bought an IBM Trackpoint II Keyboard. It includes a built-in eraser pointer between the G, H, and B keys, with two buttons below the space bar (flush with the case). The keyboard itself is that oh-so-sexy IBM clicky feel -- buckling spring.
IBM Part Number 13H6705. "Manufactured for IBM by Maxi Switch", according to the sticker on the bottom.
Cost me $35. Reseller info:
ReEntry - Computers, Peripherals, Electronic Equipment, etc.
Peadbody, MA, USA 01960
Phone: (978)532-3337
Fax: (978)532-3338
Web: http://www.gis.net/~axxxion
Email: axxxion@gis.net
I'll even pay a finders fee ($10 fair?) to the first person who can send me information which leads to the arrest and capture of an appropriate 'board.
No charge.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There is a *BSD port (pkg) of w3m which should compile without any effort beyond `cd /usr/ports/www/w3m && make install`.
On Netscape 4.7, tab does nothing here. Are you sure it does anything for you?