Sorry to lose the thread linkage. This is my second try with this message, thanks to this list's miserly message limit. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR I've decided to respond to this thread and include my answers to questions Terry has asked me in private email. I think it would be very helpful to have a better keymap for the IBM Thinkpad. However, in my experience, the lack of software speech support in Speakup is almost more of a burden in the truly portable setting. Let me go into this a bit. Perhaps the greatest nuisance with the Thinkpad's pop up numeric is that you activate/deactivate it with Shift+F10. I'm not aware there's any combination of FN keys, as there is with most portables, for getting a numeric keypad on the qwerty right hand keys. I think this would need to be solved somehow for a good Thinkpad keymap to happen. Anything else is still a major compromise. The second problem is that Speakup's screen review keys were moved from the numeric to the non-numeric keys on the numeric keypad some time ago. In other words, we have screen review with numlock off. There's no equivalent for this that I know of in pop up keypads. And, why would there be? There's just no use for a separate home, end, page up and page down key, etc., etc., when these are already available elsewhere on the keyboard. No, every popup I know of, including the Thinkpad's, only supports numbers on the pop up keypad. This issue can, of course, be handled with mappings. Lastly, I will comment some on how I live with this annoyance, as Terry has asked me to do. Frankly, more often than not, my Thinkpad is a transportable more than a portable. And, when I'm truly in portable mode, I rarely use Speakup simply because it's too cumbersome to do so. Even were there to be a good keymap that obviated the need for an ansillary numeric or full keyboard, there's still the need for an attached piece of hardware in the synthesizer. And, the true portable circumstance just isn't served well when additional devices attached by unbillical cables are required. So, for me, when I'm truly portable, I'm usually using either yasr or emacspeak with flite, these days. For me, "truly portable" is having the Thinkpad on my lap in a meeting auditorium, or on my tray table on the train or on the plane. If it's a long flight, and my roll on suitcase is overhead, I may pull out my 16-key numeric keypad, synthesizer, and serial cable, but only if I don't have seat mates. That doesn't happen often. Still, I do always travel with the synthesizer, and either the numeric or a full 104 keyboard in my suitcase. Why? Well, there are two common situations where it's quite convenient: 1.) In my hotel room it's often more comfortable to sit in a lounge chair with my feet up on the ottoman, than at those hotel desks that are usually too high. 2.) In meetings where we all sit around tables for a few days, it's quite easy to roll my computer case into the room with me and set up my little workstation in front of my spot. It's not at all a problem, in circumstances like this, to have the numeric and the speech synthesizer out on the table. And, in circumstances like this, I'm usually running off the AC, and not the battery--as is every one else in the meeting. I do enough traveling that my Thinkpad has become my main machine. When it's home in its dock, and I'm in the office, I'm usually logged into it over ssh. So, for all these reasons, I find it useful to have my portable computer a powerful machine with large capacities for processing and information storage, as well as for communication in all kinds of settings. As I consider my next machine, I'm once again tilting toward the greater processing and storage power of the T31, rather than the much lighter X30, even though the X will run on batteries for some 8 hours. That greater batter life is tempting, and so is the smaller size and reduced weight. It's not fun lugging all of this equipment around day after day. But, I suspect that, for me, having more computer is worth the hassle. -- Janina Sajka, Director Technology Research and Development Governmental Relations Group American Foundation for the Blind (AFB) Email: janina at afb.net Phone: (202) 408-8175
