any way to rebind keys?

[mackal]

I am trying to run BrainStorm on a laptop which has Home and End keys oddly placed, which makes promoting/demoting awkward; when I use my external mini-keyboard (Happy Hacking Keyboard), the placement is even more counterproductive, to the point of being the reverse of logical, at least for me (Home on left, End on right).

So... is there a way to rebind the keys in BrainStorm to something more comfortable?

[david]

I've searched high and low for a free keyboard mapping utility but without success.

PC Magazine does one called TradeKeys for around $8.

Here's a feature about it: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0%2C1895% ... 4%2C00.asp

The article is probably very useful if you're going to use the program, but it goes on for page after page after page....

Hang on. You can see the whole article here:

http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1 ... 078,00.asp

And, you can dive straight to the download here:

http://www.pcmag.com/data_process_yaga_ ... =&discuss=

It runs on Windows 95, 98, Me, 2000, and XP. (Windows NT 4.0 is not supported.)

That's the best I can do at the moment.

PS I've not tried it.

[mackal]

Ah, OK, so there is no built in way (yet?) of editing the shortcuts then, I see. I thought maybe through some registry editing, hidden .ini file, or other black magic, but guess not.

I did not consider remapping using external apps... hmm... this may work. Actually I've already used a powerful (and free) mapping utility before, so this might not be a stretch. If anyone bumps into this problem and needs an uber-powerful (and free!) keyboard+mouse+kitchen_sink mapping/automating/converting tool, I totally recommend AutoHotKeys:

http://www.autohotkey.com/

[mackal]

Ahhh, much better. That was surprisingly painless. For posterity, here is how I rebound Alt+Left and Alt+Right to End and Home using AutoHotKey:

Code: Select all

;; --- brainstorm.ahk

; this limits macro to trigger only when BrainStorm is active
#IfWinActive ahk_class BSWFrameWndClass

!Left::
Send {End}
return

!Right::
Send {Home}
return
;; ---

It's worth noting that the simpler and more straight forward

Code: Select all

!Left::End
!Right::Home


will not work because the Alt modifier is then passed along with End and Home, and BrainStorm's bindings for Promote and Demote specifically preclude any modifiers.

[david]

You're a marvel. Thank you very much.

A keyboard macro is one of the 175 suggestions in our "wouldn't it be nice if" (WIBNI) file. The file seems to grow faster than Marck can demolish it.

In general, we are bloatware averse, so a lot of the 175 won't get implemented. But the keyboard macro has been on our minds for a long time.

[mackal]

Glad to be of help.

I would encourage you not to strike "keyboard bindings/macros" off your WIBNI list just yet; such a solution would still be superior to the current AutoHotKey workaround. For one, the AHK workaround has the weaknesses that it cannot distinguish between whether BrainStorm is currently in navigation or editing mode. For example, with my bindings turned on, Alt+Left Arrow will move the text cursor to the end of current line when in edit mode (i.e., AHK blindly translates that key combination into End keypress). I suspect some folks will want to limit their bindings to only one mode; I am not sure if this can be done using the AHK approach.

I totally support the "bloatware averse" stance, but I think user-editable bindings could be added with adding next to no bloat, say by placing them in an editable *.ini file that gets parsed when BrainStorm fires up. That should be relatively little more code than having such bindings listed in a source file that gets compiled into the binary...

[david]

I did wonder about the Home End stuff and edit mode. Home = Left, and End = Right seems natural and there you were reversing it.

We haven't struck key mapping off our list. We just have so many darned things on it that are higher priority just at this moment.

We'll take stock and share our thoughts once the next version is out. (Right now, delivery of the new machine which is so important to development speed has been postponed (don't ask) to April 10.)

Some collective finger-crossing might not go amiss right now.

[flamerz]

you can do that with phrase express.

i mapped the Home/End keys to reverse (im not used to navigate with the default ones).

[johnleee]

We can go one step further by introducing a bit of redundancy; the two SubSample models contain the respective flat lists plus the hierarchical list. I have manually non-namesaked municipalities*. So, the hierarchical list shows a geographical view of the research outcome.