R ALT-X works for me on a 2014 Acer Aspire E5 Laptop. I wonder if the root of this issue is that there no longer seems to be a keyboard standard (as we knew it in DOS); where TSRs were the norm.
I have several TSR programs connected to either Left Shift or Left CTRL and my favorite TSR (PC-OUTLINE) with a <CTRL /> only works in DOS 3.31 or below. All I get now is an echo of the key combination with that one. All of my other TSR programs are functional except Collins dictionary and I have a work-around for it with WPShell and WP60. On Sat, Mar 5, 2016 at 2:26 PM, John Hupp <free...@prpcompany.com> wrote: > Ever since I moved from MS-DOS to FreeDOS years ago, I have been annoyed > by some R-Alt key behavior. (This is on a US ANSI-layout keyboard.) > > The classic illustration was in Edit, where I couldn't R-Alt+X to exit. > > But my touch-typing technique for a L-Alt+X would be left index finger > on L-Alt, plus left ring finger on X. Nearly impossible!! Other key > combinations were awkward at best. > > And as I noted in another post recently, the mouse pointer in Edit is > nearly invisible on the machine I'm currently working with, so > mouse-instead-of-keyboard wasn't a decent solution either. > > But after another dive into this issue, I now notice this: > > - Even in Edit, R-Alt acts like L-Alt with no document open. > - In SetEdit, R-Alt acts like L-Alt. > - In FreeDOS Help, R-Alt acts like L-Alt. > - In DOOM, R-Alt acts like L-Alt. > > I'm now thinking that in DOS, the kernel's keyboard input method > probably consists of rather simply reading the BIOS keyboard buffer, and > absent the intervention of a running DOS keyboard driver, it is probably > up to each program to decide how to process key combinations. > > If that's the case, then it's probably just FreeDOS Edit (and perhaps a > few other programs) that will annoy me this way. > > Can anyone confirm or deny this understanding? > > [By the way, I also looked at running KEYB with a customized US.KEY > layout, but it looks like US.KEY only customizes a handful of keys and > key combinations, leaving the rest to whatever the default keyboard > handling is. To make R-Alt act like L-Alt across the board, I would > have to create MANY lines in the k858 look-up table, specifying what > happens for R-Alt+A, R-Alt+B, R-Alt+C, etc. And it might be that > program handling of key combinations could still override that -- I > don't know.] > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > _______________________________________________ > Freedos-user mailing list > Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user >
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