Settings KeyboardSettings/en

This dialog controls if dead keys are handled and presents the mapping from Ctrl- and Cmd-Keys to edit functions.

Dead Key Processing

This can be enabled globally via the keyboard settings dialog, or locally for individual editor views.

If dead keys are enabled, some characters act as "Dead Key, these are not printed but will modify the next character typed.

Typical dead key sequences are:

• " (double quote) followed by a vowel, to get German Umlaut characters ä, ö, ü or other language's diacritical characters with two dots above (ÿ, ë etc.).

• French accents are entered by ' (quote), ` (backquote) or ^, followed by the character, to get é, è, ê etc.
  The c-cedille is entered with , (comma) followed by c.

• Spanish "ñ" (n-tilde) by ~ followed by n.

Dead key handling can be enabled locally via the code editor's menu ("More" - "Misc" - "Dead Keys") or globally via the settings dialog (in "Look and Feel - Keyboard Settings").

In some apps (Workspace and System Browser), this may also be found in the lower-right info&status area, as a popup of the edit mode field (the one, which shows "I" for "insert mode").

Global dead key enablement is a session flag and defaults to false, because most programmers feel hindered by them, when entering program code.

To enable it by default for all views, add the following line to your "display.rc" or "private.rc" file:

WindowSensor deadKeysEnabled:true

Of course, you can also evaluate this in a workspace.
To disable, evaluate:

WindowSensor deadKeysEnabled:false

Dead Key followed by Space

In expecco, a space character following a dead-key will insert both the dead key and the character. This is different from other systems, where the space is "eaten" and only the dead key is entered.

We found this inconvenient for programmers, where strings or comments with initial space are relatively common. If you do not like this feature, evaluate:

WindowSensor deadKeyEatsSpace:true.

Keyboard Mapping

Expecco uses a keyboard map, which maps keys with modifier to logical functions. For example, this map defines a mapping from Ctrl-c to the logical function Copy.

This mapping is initially read from a file at startup ("display.rc" in the expecco installation folder, or in your home's ".expecco" folder).

Keyboard Macros

The editors also support keyboard macros. These are scripts written in Smalltalk which are executed when the corresponding key is pressed. These are useful if repeated edit operations are to be performed on longer text or data documents; however, they need some background knowledge and coding by adding those scripts to the above listed startup file(s). Notice that the Workspace also provides operations for bulk processing in its "Edit" menu, which might be easier to use.

For permanent changes, copy and modify this file as required in any text editor (the expecco FileBrowser can be used for this).

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