Virtual PC + Word 2007 ≠ AltGr support?

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/01/17 06:31 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/01/17/7126999.aspx

Some prior stabs on this topic:

  • 28 Dec 2004 "To start press the ALTGR key." Hmm... where's the ALTGR key?
  • 21 Apr 2005 Intuitive is in the eye of the beholder 
  • 2 May 2005 Virtual PC needs international thought about its keyboard support
  • 15 Mar 2006 Multilingual keyboards and Microsoft Word 
  • 17 Apr 2006 Get off my freaking key!
  • 08 Sep 2007 Detecting ALTGR can only hope to work when ALTGR is in fact there....
  • 16 Nov 2007 Detecting ALTGR fails when ALTGR isn't there (Just Czech-ed out in Word 2007)

    • Now pay attention to that one in bold, it is the one I forgot about in my never-ending conversation with Stu about how even with AltGr working well in Word 2007, there is still something missing on the globalization side if CTRL+ALT doesn't work too....

    I was reminded about it by Henry Skoglund, who commented yesterday:

    BTW, thanks for the tip in your blog sometime last year, that pressing CTRL+ALT together is equivalent to pressing ALTGR. That saves a lot of time when you're trying to enter some keys like []{} inside a Virtual PC session (if you're happen to be using a Swedish keyboard) because Virtual PC's default hotkey is ALTGR.

    So, just like with my MacBook Pro (which has no ALTGR key), Virtual PC may as well have no ALTGR key, since Virtual PC has other plans for that damn key.... :-)

    Now I can hate that they do, since this is not something that everyone wants. But the simple fact is that there are two kinds of people who get good use out of CTRL+ALT in this scenario:

    Now as I pointed out in this comment, Word 2007 is most of the way there; if you remove the shortcut, then CTRL+ALT works as if it were the ALTGR, just as Bob and Nature intended! :-)

    I really need to sit down and do that Word add-in at some point -- because this particular set of en-to-end scenarios is almost delivered. We have the help of Windows, Word's add-in model, Word's keyboard shortcut support, and now I just have to get that last bit done (in my copious spare time, G knows I have tons of that!) to consider this set of scenarios delivered....

     

    This post brought to you by ∵ (U+2235, a.k.a. BECAUSE)

    # Mike Dimmick on 17 Jan 2008 10:14 AM:

    I note that the keys have changed for Virtual Machine Connection in Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, although that's more because it's now based on Remote Desktop Connection (a.k.a. Terminal Services Client if you first met in the Windows 2000 era).

    http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2008/01/14/virtual-machine-connection-key-combinations-with-hyper-v.aspx

    # Michael S. Kaplan on 17 Jan 2008 1:35 PM:

    That is wonderful news whether it was intentional or not! :-)

    Computer Technical Support on 4 Jul 2009 8:43 AM:

    Thanks for sharing this informative post.

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    referenced by

    2012/04/26 Michael's Keyboard Laws for Developers, Part 5

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