OTT keyboard customization

users
#1

Greetings -- I have a ws.ott template file that allows me to use most
WordStar navigation commands -- the cursor diamond, etc -- in Open Office.
However, the same file does not work in LibreOffice... Is there any reason
for this?

Alex in Bangkok

#2

Alex

Greetings -- I have a ws.ott template file that allows me to use most
WordStar navigation commands -- the cursor diamond, etc -- in Open Office.
However, the same file does not work in LibreOffice... Is there any reason
for this?

Alex in Bangkok

I am not sure, I would need to see some typical commands/key
combinations. I am not very familiar with WordStar, I understand it is
abandonware. I vaguely remember it from about 20 years ago but never
used it.

#3

That will be interesting. I'd love to see a list of the WordStar keyboard commands.

I remember using WordStar and also their text Editor (TextStar , I think) but it has been a long time -- around 30 years), both on CP/M-80. WordStar 2000 on MS-DOS was not so hot and I turned my back on it. (My next favorite was Borland Sprint, based on a word processor from the UK, I believe.)

Now, the way these things works the various control-key combinations that started out in WordStar tended to find their way into later products, even though WordStar itself is long gone.

There is an interesting account of this in Wikipedia, <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wordstar#Interface>. It mentions that the Turbo Pascal IDE (on a text interface) used the WordStar diamond, and I believe the Microsoft Editor, ME, designed for developers (and that I favored for a long time) also supported some of the Word Star keyboard command sequences.

- Dennis

#4

Thanks, Dennis. I've attached both a list of all the WS commands and the
.ott that supports a small but important sub-set of them. Unfortunately,
like I said, the .ott works in OO but not in LO... or I am doing something
wrong, perhaps?

Wordstar came packaged with my Kaypro II, the then cutting-edge luggable
that earned its keep with me for almost ten years beginning in the mid- to
late-70s... or was it, early 80s? Anyhow, in some respects its capabilities
-- most especially the virtually unknown WS for Windows, which was more a
DTP program than an editor -- have still never been equaled.

All I'm trying to arrange in LO are a few of the navigating/editing commands
that I've painstakingly preserved over the past several years working with
OO in the attached .ott file.

As some will realize, keyboard tweaking of OO/LO is a major pain, since the
editing/navigating commands are not organized in anything like rational
order. For example, why aren't "cursor up," "cursor down," "cursor left,"
and "cursor right" juxtaposed, in the listing? And the word movement
equivalents: "word left" and "word right" -- why aren't they there, too,
along with "page up," "para up," etc. As it is now, you have to fish all
over the place to find the key assignments you want.

Again, my thanks for the interest in helping. ###

#5

Hi Alex,

Alex Mavro wrote (30-05-11 02:17)

Greetings -- I have a ws.ott template file that allows me to use most
WordStar navigation commands -- the cursor diamond, etc -- in Open Office.
However, the same file does not work in LibreOffice... Is there any reason
for this?

Well, the key bindings are not saved in the .ott, but in the user profile. So I guess you have to set up those for LibreOffice via Tools > Customize ...

Regards,
Cor

#6

Many thanks, Cor.

Can I port over the OO user profile info to LO? If so, can you give me a
hint concerning where to begin?

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
I think that if you are using Gnu&Linux then you might be able to set your
keyboard short-cuts to use the WordStar navigation commands to work in all
relevant applications. It might be difficult to change the use of CtrlX tho.
As Planas points out it does depend on what those key combinations were/are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordStar

There is a word-processor, released under GPL, that uses the same key
combinations as WordStar but it seems to work inside a command window. Also
although it works in Gnu&Linux and Bsd it needs something like Cygwin to run in
Windows. There is even a program that works with it that swaps the shift and
Ctrl keys around so that the keyboard works the way older keyboards used to.
It hasn't had any upgrades or even updates in the last few years but it does
seem to have taken the key combinations a bit further than WordStar. Apparently
it's possible to have a ribbon showing key-combinations just as WordStar used
to. So it's got a lot in common with Vi but it uses WordStar combinations
rather than Vi ones.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe's_Own_Editor
http://joe-editor.sourceforge.net/
The SourceForge page is not a downloads page, it's Joe's home page.

For other people following this thread the key combinations according to the
Wikipedia page ...

"For example, the "diamond" of Ctrl-S/E/D/X moved the cursors one character or
line to the left, up, right, or down. Ctrl-A/F (to the outside of the
"diamond") moved the cursor a full word left/right, and Ctrl-R/C (just "past"
the Ctrl keys for up and down) scrolled a full page up/down. Prefacing these
keystrokes with Ctrl-Q generally expanded their action, moving the cursor to
the end/beginning of the line, end/beginning of the document, etc. Ctrl-H would
backspace and delete. Commands to enable bold or italics, printing, blocking
text to copy or delete, saving or retrieving files from disk, etc. were
typically a short sequence of keystrokes, such as Ctrl-P-B for bold, or
Ctrl-K-S to save a file. Formatting codes would appear on screen, such as ^B
for bold, ^Y for italics, and ^S for underscoring. "
So i suspect there might be trouble with trying to redefine Ctrl X and Ctrl S
from their usual functions although i'm not clear about that. There is another
thread dealing with that issue at the moment.

    Although many of these keystroke sequences were far from self-evident, they
tended to lend themselves to mnemonic devices (e.g., Ctrl-Print-Bold,
Ctrl-blocK-Save), and regular users quickly learned them through muscle memory,
enabling them to rapidly navigate documents by touch, rather than memorizing
"Ctrl-S = cursor left." Some users believe that the relocation of the Ctrl
key from the position just to the left of the A key on the PC XT-era keyboard
(where Caps-Lock is found on modern keyboards), to the far lower left,
interferes with this tactile approach,"

It might be worth contacting Joe's developers and original creator to see if
they are interested in working with LibreOffice devs. It might also be
interesting to explore contacting"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Learning Technology"
originally started as Riverdeep Interactive Learning as they bought WordStar but
don't appear to have done anything with it. (reminiscent of Oracle so take
care)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houghton_Mifflin_Harcourt_Learning_Technology

Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
Sorry i have lost track of this thread. Which Operating System are you using;
Windows, Ubuntu, another gnu&linux, a Bsd or Mac? The LO profiles in gnu&linux
(such as Ubuntu, Fedora etc) are in

/home/user/.libreoffice/3/user
and for OpenOffice they are in
/home/user/.openoffice.org/3/user
I suspect replace user (both times) with your normal user-name. It's generally
probably better to use the rsync command rather than drag&drop or copy&paste or
'sudo cp' on the command-line because rsync keeps permissions intact and cp
didn't used to (it might now).

However i think Cor was pointing towards a cleverer, more elegant approach (as
usual)
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#9

Alex Mavro wrote (30-05-11 07:45)

Many thanks, Cor.

Can I port over the OO user profile info to LO? If so, can you give me a
hint concerning where to begin?

In your case, it is enough to move/copy this file
   user/registry/data/org/openoffice/Office/Accelerators.xcu
so smthing as
   user/registry/data/org/libreoffice/Office/.

Of course you may do the whole user profile, but with different versions (pre and post 3.3) extra options in LibreOffice, I would not trust that.

Best,
Cor

#10

Hi all,

I?m trying to configure LibreOffice to fill user data from a Microsoft AD
(LDAP) user base, as it used to work in OpenOffice:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Administration_Guide/LDAP_Access

http://ausnerd.blogspot.com/2011/02/using-libreoffice-and-openoffice-33-in.html

I?ve created a oo-ad-ldap.xcd based on oo-ad-ldap.xcd.sample file in
%programfiles%\LibreOffice 3\Basis\share\registry with the changes needed
to match my AD environment, but nothing happened and the user data are
still empty.

Anyone knows if this feature should word on LibreOffice 3.3.1 and above ?

Is there a way to look for error messages ? When the user data should be
filled ?

Thanks,
Guilherme

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#11

Many thanks, Cor. Problem solved.

I'll be back, no doubt. <g> ###