Numlock
Mike A. Harris
mharris at redhat.com
Wed Sep 17 08:42:46 UTC 2003
On Tue, 16 Sep 2003, Thomas Dodd wrote:
>> So, without modifying the kernel and/or X server, you'll have to
>> run setleds, or xset for X. I dunno if the kernel guys are open
>> to the idea of patching the kernel to be sane for numlock by
>> default or not, but I'd consider doing it for X, especially if
>
>I've seen several application misbehave when num-lock is on.
>A big one form me is HP's SmarTest. Its's motif based. It's the UI for a
>some test equipment, that I use for testing SRAM (single, dual, and quad
>ports, FIFOs , and even some CPLDs). I often display it remotely to my
>Linux and Solaris machines. It won't work correctly if numlock is on, on
>either machine.
That's not an argument against having numlock enabled by default,
but rather an argument to file bug reports to HP's engineering
team for the faulty product.
>Sure, it's a bug in the application, but not one I can fix. HP is very
>slow to fix bugs, and the fixes usually require the purchase of a new
>version.
Are you suggesting that Linux development and user friendliness
be held up waiting for commercial vendors to update broken
software?
>I've seen similar behavior in other apps on Solaris. So there are valid
>reason not to have numlock on. I've seen a few apps on Solaris that use
>the numpad keys as numbers when numlock is off too. As I recal, they
>didn't behave well when numlock was on.
Wrong. You set defaults to be for the general case. People
using the faulty software can apply workarounds/reconfigure
around the bugs in their software.
--
Mike A. Harris ftp://people.redhat.com/mharris
OS Systems Engineer - XFree86 maintainer - Red Hat
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