Quotation marks, or not?

I don't know why I didn't notice this sooner, oh well. I can't use quotation marks in the LinAXEPad. Running Ubuntu 9.10, and AXEPad version 1.1.0. My keyboard setup is "USA International (with dead keys)". It's set up in such a way that to get quotation marks, I have to hold Shift, hit the quotation mark key and then hit Space. However, when I try this in AXEPad all I get is a blank space. Would changing the keyboard layout fix this or is it a AXEPad bug? I know that the quotation marks work just fine in any other program on the computer. I'm thinking of entering in the SparkFun/Instructables contest, I just hope this isn't a severe problem...

-EDIT- Changed the layout to the only other option available, plain "USA". Still nothing.

I'm not sure how easy it will be to investigate this as it seems to be a peculiarity of the hardware - what exactly is the hardware you are using ?

Sorry for the late reply, forgot that I'd even posted here. Must convert this brain to 40x2 Picaxe power with double EEPROM for double the brain storage capacity . I'm using a Toshiba A105-S4094 but I'm not sure as to exactly what keyboard it uses. I will download a hardware manager for Ubuntu and check.

-EDIT- The hardware manager that I found in Ubuntu didn't quite have as much info in it as the Windows manager did. So, I got a screenshot from the Windows manager. However, it doesn't give much info either. Keyboard is "Standard 101/102-key keyboard or Microsoft Natural PS/2 keyboard". I also tried it with a cheap ($5 US) "Lexma" USB keyboard, no luck there either. I think it has something to do with the way the keyboard is set up. I could try upgrading to 10.10 (I have 9.10 installed right now) to see if it'd fix anything, even though I doubt it would.

Well, I've tried several things, none of which have helped. I'm thinking that maybe installing some different keyboard layouts might help, I just haven't done that yet. For now, it's not too big a deal as I'm running Windows as well, but if I toss it out the window, it'll be nice to be able to code without having to run Wine or something. In fact, I'm not even sure that PE would run in Wine... I'm really stuck here as to what to do. Is there anyone else out there that is running AXEPad on Ubuntu 9.10 that can use the quotation marks? If there is, I'd like to know .

Quotation marks work in 8.10 but that's with a standard UK 101 key keyboard. The problem seems to be this US keyboard layout 'dead key' configuration which I must admit I'd never heard of before.

AXEpad simply interfaces to the OS and gets the ASCII characters for keys presses , so it shouldn't care about what hardware is connected but there does seem to be an issue.

Are the quotation marks causing problems double-quotes ( " ) as used for characters and strings "A" etc, or single ( ' ) for comments ? If the later you could use semi-colon instead ( ; ). You could also use some other character and then Find and Replace though that might have problems accepting quotation entry.

Actually that's one thing which would help us in debugging - Open Edit->Find and do the text boxes there accept the quotation marks there ?

I don't believe Programming Editor fully runs under WINE but am not sure of the state of play.

Perhaps the simplest, though inconvenient, solution is to type your program in a text editor, save that as .BAS and load that via AXEpad ?

Yes, I should try to install some alternate keyboard layouts. I can't use ( " ) or ( ' ) . I noticed not being able to use the ( ' ) a while back, but didn't think twice about it till I found out about not being able to use ( " ), especially since I can use ( ; ) or REM instead. It does display ( ' ) when I open up programs written in Windows, so it is capable of displaying it.

And yes, the ( " ) will display just fine in the "Find" (Oooh, Chrome mocks me ) window. Oh, one thing. I noticed that a little box with the numbers "0085" occasionally appears when I type ( " ), picture below.




-EDIT- Changed keyboard layout to plain UK, the ( ' ) key worked just fine, both in AXEPad and elsewhere. Couldn't type the ( " ) symbol, but that's probably because I don't have the right marks on the keyboard to find the right key to hit.

NXTreme said:

And yes, the ( " ) will display just fine in the "Find"

Click to expand...

That's very useful to know, narrows down the problem area quite a lot.

Do you - or anyone - know if WinAXEpad works with a Dead-Key Keyboard or if that is also exhibiting the same problem ?

It seemed to me that the US keyboard without the dead-keys displayed the same behavior as the dead-key keyboard. However, when I changed between the two, I didn't apply system wide changes as I did when I switched over to the UK keyboard, applying them system wide might change something. I booted up in Windows this morning, and probably won't be able to switch over 'till later but when I do, I will switch the keyboard to standard US (no dead-keys) and apply the changes system wide. Thanks for the help, very appreciated!

It works!

Ok, so I got it working. I haven't done much testing/programming yet, but I was able to get the ( " ) character to print using the keyboard layout "Canada, Canada English". I applied the changes system wide. It's funny, in the editor all I have to do is hold Shift and hit the quotation mark key and it appears, but in Chrome at least, I have to hold Shift, hit the quotation mark key and then hit the Space bar (well, more of a gentle tap...) to get it to appear.

So, some how the way the US layout registered key presses is different then the Canadian way... and I don't mind using the Canadian layout at all, it's almost the same, just better, like with most things I must add . American football is too violent anyways, give me good old hockey any day!

I haven't tested this completely, just the included screenshot so far, but I'm hoping. Well, thanks for your help, I hope your able to figure out what was going on there, and if not, at least I got it working. I'll be using AXEPad more often from now on, so you might see me in the AXEPad forums a bit more... the download complete window does have some problems, and the "Next" button under Edit>Find>Find is a bit chopped off... but that's for a different topic!

Glad to hear you've found something suitable that's usable. You're right; keyboard layouts and what deals with them are a bit of a mystery - as I know with my own frustration in getting the right vertical bar key to work in all places under Windows.

NXTreme said:

American football is too violent anyways, give me good old hockey any day!

Click to expand...

Ah yes - if the play isn't violent enough, give them high tech carbon fiber sticks to beat one another with ;-)

John

hippy said:

Glad to hear you've found something suitable that's usable. You're right; keyboard layouts and what deals with them are a bit of a mystery - as I know with my own frustration in getting the right vertical bar key to work in all places under Windows.

Click to expand...

Yes! I wish that keyboards would all be the same... maybe when Google takes over...

papaof2 said:

Ah yes - if the play isn't violent enough, give them high tech carbon fiber sticks to beat one another with ;-)

Click to expand...

Well, at least hockey fans have barriers separating them and the players. Unlike that poor camera guy in this last Super Bowl...