[ltp] fn key

[Carl Friedberg]

I believe I've brought this up before. The newer IBM ThinkPad keyboards
have changed the way the Fn key works. Prior to the T40, and certainly
for earlier version of the A2x, 390X, and I15xx, the Fn key, when held
down as a shift-like key, enabled transmitting a subset of the keyboard
as the numeric keypad (with the same scan codes you get from a 104-key
PC keyboard, from the keypad). With the T40, this no longer works; you
must use SHIFT-ScrLk (there's a small NumLk printed above) to get
the numeric keypad keys, but that disables those keys until you unlock
the thing, which is not the desired behavior.

If you want to see how this actually works, I believe Kermit will
help you with the

show key

command.

I've tried to get IBM support to address this, but they just plain
don't get it...

Sorry,

Carl Friedberg
carl dot ibm at comets dot com

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Thomas de Grenier de Latour 
> [mailto:degrenier%easyconnect.fr@fwd.com] 
> Sent: Monday, October 27, 2003 10:55 AM
> To: linux-thinkpad
> Subject: Re: [ltp] fn key
> 
> 
> On Mon, 30 Jun 2003 22:09:18 -0400 (EDT)
> linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org (mukesh agrawal) wrote:
> 
> > So I've done both that, and the xmodmap command, but the Fn 
> key still
> > doesn't work as a modifier. xev shows that the server is 
> emitting the
> > Control_L keysym, but not emitting anything for the key that I press
> > while holding down Fn.
> > 
> > E.g. if I hit Control-c, then I get four events:
> > 	1. KeyPress Control_L
> > 	2. KeyPress c
> > 	3. KeyRelease c
> > 	4. KeyRelease Control_L
> > 
> > But if I hit Fn-c (having run the xmodmap command, and 
> setkeycodes), I
> > only get two events (1 & 4 from the list above).
> > 
> > Is there a workaround for this? (FWIW, this is a T40 with 2.4.21-ac2
> > and XFree 4.3.)
> > 
> 
> Same problem here. I'm about to come to the conclusion that 
> on T40, ibm
> has decided to lock the whole keyboard when "Fn" is pressed. Anyone to
> show me I'm wrong? I would really love to be able to use this key as
> a modifier, it is at such a perfect place for that...
> 
> thanks,
> 
> -- 
> TGL.
> -- 
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