[mg21956] Bracket Trouble with IT Keyb.
Bojan Bistrovic
> I have this problem with Math 4.0 . ( under Win 98 )
>
> If I type
> Plot[ ...... etc.....
> the software beeps and looking at "Why the beep" I get :
>
> "You used a Command or Control key that is not defined
> to do anything " .
>
> But if I copy the Brackets from the characters map all is good
> and nothing beeps .
>
> So the trouble is ( I think ) in the control sequence I use
> to get the brackets that is : " Alt + Shift + e' " or " Ctrl + Alt + e' " .
>
> Now I do not know what to do .
> Does anyone has an Idea on solving this ?
>
> ( If I it can help : This never occurred using Mathematica 3.0 ,
> that is installed on the same PC yet )
>
> ( I hope you will forgive my probably mistake-full english : ) )
>
> Thank you .
> Bye.
>
The problem is probably this: on US keyboards braces like "[" or "{" are
placed above the "enter" key; most European keyboards use those keys for
language-specific characters like characters with accents or umlauts or
something else and put those braces on bizarre places like (Alt-Gr)-W or
something similar (Alt-Gr is the Alt on the right to the space bar). Now,
Mathematica uses combinations Alt-something and Ctrl-something as keyboard
shortcuts so when you try to enter "[" character, front end "sees" that you
have pressed Alt key and assumes that you WANTED some kbd-shortcut, so it
tries to interpret it as a kdb-shortcut (command) and fails. Try changing
your keyboard to US-type and the problem should disappeaa r.
Bye, Bojan
--
-------------------------------------------------------------
Bojan Bistrovic, boj...@physics.odu.edu
Old Dominion University, Physics Department, Norfolk, VA
-------------------------------------------------------------
Hartmut Wolf
>
> Hello,
> I have this problem with Math 4.0 . ( under Win 98 )
>
> If I type
> Plot[ ...... etc.....
> the software beeps and looking at "Why the beep" I get :
>
> "You used a Command or Control key that is not defined
> to do anything " .
>
> But if I copy the Brackets from the characters map all is good
> and nothing beeps .
>
> So the trouble is ( I think ) in the control sequence I use
> to get the brackets that is : " Alt + Shift + e' " or " Ctrl + Alt + e' " .
>
> Now I do not know what to do .
> Does anyone has an Idea on solving this ?
>
> ( If I it can help : This never occurred using Mathematica 3.0 ,
> that is installed on the same PC yet )
>
> ( I hope you will forgive my probably mistake-full english : ) )
>
> Thank you .
> Bye.
Dear Nicola,
although I can't give any good advice, I can tell that I share your
problems, ... do I?
Mine occur with the german keybord setting. To get "[" there is to type
(alt-gr)+8 and for "]" (alt-gr)+9 which works, but has the drawback
that both, the shifting key and the typing key, are to the right side of
the keyboard. ((alt-gr) is the *right* alt-key.)
A standard way -- that works fine with all software I have, or had, e.g.
Mathematica 3 -- in order to avoid the bad ergonomy of crossing hands
and far movement, is to simultaneously press the (alt)+(cntl)+8 or
(alt)+(cntl)+9 key. The (alt) and (cntl) keys are side by side to the
left, so it should work fine.
Not so with Mathematica 4.0! In principle it works, but not always. If
your are typing quickly most certainly things will go wrong. When you
release the (alt)+(cntl)+anykey combination you do have to release the
keys in a certain order, based on a *millisecond* timing basis!
Otherwise, when Mathematica transiently sees the Alt key pressed alone
-- perhaps because the spring below is a little more worn out, or
because the trigger level is a little bit different, or just because one
or two neurons of your motoric control of your left ring finger didn't
fire in the right time slot -- the input will jump into menu bar, and if
you are lucky, the next key your are going to press won't activate a
menu, you get the beep and interrupt. Pressing the (esc) key or just the
(alt) key once will bring you back to right trails, and after having
restored mental order you may continue typing. If the next key pressed
after that inadvertent transient (alt) was a menu key, *no beep* will
occur, the menu will open, and then if the next kep pressed is no
submenu key ...
...I was happy to never hit the close combination.
Opening and closing square brackets are probably the most used
characters in Mathematica, and by the way, the same problem occurs with
"{" and "}" which also come not too infrequent.
How do I live with that?
(1) If I have very much time typing (perhaps because I'm hesitant with
my input, still thinking) I make that unergonomic "far movement".
(2) I trained my right hand to simultaniously press the key combination
to the right, but with time this wears out my right hand, and I'm not a
piano player.
(3) I trained my left hand to a certain order (don't ask me which one,
I don't know, this is below my perceptibility) to release the
(alt)+(ctrl) keys. This works as long I'm not typing too fast.
(4) When I'm typing faster I release the keys at the left with a jerk,
but this certainly will wear out my left hand. If some day I'll get a
ligament disrupture, I'll feud Wolfram Inc. If some day I'll meet the
programmer, ... (God help me!)
A simple alternative to that would be to switch to the English(US)
setting of the keybord at OS level (and moreover use all Us settings --
but then I come across with the millimeter versus inch problems for
printing). I indeed could memoize the location of the keys, 20 or so
shifted to different locations, and even I could get accustomed to the
switched "y" and "z" keys, but there is a life beyond Mathematica (it's
only a side occupation to me), and I have to write a lot of text in
german. But for that my sofware is nationalized, and it's *really* a
mess to input the umlauts and german-sharp-s diacritics through the
US-keybord setting. (The French are more lucky in that respect, and I
know I'm still luckier than the Hungarian.)
I once browsed through the option inspector. There are lots of
interesting options like "DelimiterFlashTime",
"CursorTrackerParameters", "TwoByteSyntaxCharacterAAutomatic", ... some
are documented, some are optional, others aren't.
Why did I write this? I believe in miracles.
yours, Hartmut
---------------------
P.S. my OS is Windows NT4.0 SP 5 (nationalized)
Rasmus Debitsch
I have asked the wolfram support a few month ago about this :
I have some problem with the new Version 4 of Mathematica.
(1) When typing a "[" the front end message "You used a Command or Control
key combination that is not defined to do anything." appears on my console.
The keyboard is a german keyboard and [ is generated with the key sequence
"Alt Gr" (. The messages appears every time when using the "Alt Gr" key.
and got the answer (12/8/99):
1) This is a mistake on our part. We have fixed this in the next release
of Mathematica. Unfortunately, this isn't quite out yet. I apologize
for any inconvience that this might have caused you.
So the problem will be solved with the next version.
Regards
--
Rasmus Debitsch
Carl Zeiss Lithos GmbH
Carl Zeiss Strasse
D-73447 Oberkochen
eMail : debi...@zeiss.de
Hermann Meier
"Bojan Bistrovic" <boj...@physics.odu.edu> wrote in message
news:87mt7d$7id$1...@dragonfly.wolfram.com...
> > I have this problem with Mathematica 4.0 . ( under Win 98 )
> >
> > If I type
> > Plot[ ...... etc.....
> > the software beeps and looking at "Why the beep" I get :
> >
> > "You used a Command or Control key that is not defined
> > to do anything " .
> > ( If I it can help : This never occurred using Mathematica 3.0 ,
> > that is installed on the same PC yet )
> >
I had the same problem with Mathematica 4.0.0 under Windows NT SP 6, but only after
installing a certain type of sound card. Deinstalling the driver (actually
disabling this card) helped.
Sincerely
Hermann Meier
Valur Einarsson
possible unwanted sideeffects) is to select Edit -> Preferences... from the
menu, lookup GlobalOptions->MessageOptions->"WarningActions" and unselect
Beep. This means that Mathematica will not beep at you when any event triggering a
warning occurs, including the one arising from the use of brackets involving
AltGr.
Hope this helps,
/Valur
"Bojan Bistrovic" <boj...@physics.odu.edu> wrote in message
news:87mt7d$7id$1...@dragonfly.wolfram.com...
> > Hello,
> > I have this problem with Mathematica 4.0 . ( under Win 98 )
> >
> > If I type
> > Plot[ ...... etc.....
> > the software beeps and looking at "Why the beep" I get :
> >
> > "You used a Command or Control key that is not defined
> > to do anything " .
> >
> > But if I copy the Brackets from the characters map all is good
> > and nothing beeps .
> >
> > So the trouble is ( I think ) in the control sequence I use
> > to get the brackets that is : " Alt + Shift + e' " or " Ctrl + Alt + e'
" .
> >
> > Now I do not know what to do .
> > Does anyone has an Idea on solving this ?
> >
> > ( If I it can help : This never occurred using Mathematica 3.0 ,
> > that is installed on the same PC yet )
> >
> > ( I hope you will forgive my probably mistake-full english : ) )
> >
> > Thank you .
> > Bye.
> >