by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2008/10/07 10:01 -04:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2008/10/07/8982161.aspx
Regular readers, as you might imagine, tend to come and go.
Sometimes, like in the case of people like Suzanne E. McCarthy, they seem to drop off the face of the planet and you never hear from them again. Even their Blogs are inactive.
Since indeed Suzanne's went inactive after she was talking about Myanmar, it must be allowed that it is technically possible that militant Burmese abducted her from her home in Vancouver, though under the theory of the "when you hear hoof beats except horses not zebras" theory of forming conclusions, such possibilities rarely deserve the kind of attention that the first half of this very sentence, in its own reckless and self-serving way, has chosen to do.
And other times, they are still around!
Take for example regular reader Jan Kučera, who just asked over in the Suggestion Box:
One simple question I'm afraid I know the answer to.... If you have more languages installed, but you use some of them only rarely, I would like to select those which will be in the "Left Alt+Shift cycle", and keep the rest only for explicit selection or custom keyboard shortcuts... any way to do that?
Thanks! Jan
Unfortunately, there is no direct way to force only a subset of the installed keyboard layouts to be used in the LEFT ALT+SHIFT cycle.
One could, if one were drinking with geeks, hypothesize turning off LEFT ALT+SHIFT handling, adding a global hotkey, and attaching to it a handler that would use the configured list.
And then, if one were the kind of geek to take those kinds of ideas and try them out (thought experiment solutions almost begging to actually achieve the state of implementation and all), one could try to make it possible.
Though these days I am not quite that kind of geek, if you know what I mean. It takes a certain kind of commitment that I just don't have.
Not that I'm not still involved in the thought experiment type situations and scenarios.
But it is like the difference between bacon and eggs.
With bacon and eggs, the pig is committed; the chicken is merely involved....
Sorry Jan! Though you did say you kind of knew the answer going in. :-)
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# Jan Kučera on 7 Oct 2008 1:08 PM:
Hi Michael, thanks for your comments! Actually I have found (by accident) quite easier way to deal with this problem... and that is to use LEFT ALT+RIGHT SHIFT to go backwards in the cycle, which allows you to place your favorite languages at the begining of whole LEFT+ALT SHIFT cycle and just at least step backwards instead of recycle through all others. I'd bet you know this but I thought I will mention it for all others who were not so lucky yet to have...this..type of accident! :)
# Andrew West on 8 Oct 2008 10:12 AM:
Suzanne is still alive and blogging (http://powerscourt.blogspot.com/), but just not on Abecedaria, which I agree is a great loss to our little corner of the blogosphere.
# Suzanne McCarthy on 8 Oct 2008 5:52 PM:
Wow, for some curious reason I dropped in on your blog today. I have not exactly dropped off the face of the earth, but I have had an interesting last two years. Whew.
Here is my personal blog. I am still thinking about writing systems and plan to excerpt a little from Pamuk's Black Book on Hurufism (lettrism) tonight.
# Michael S. Kaplan on 8 Oct 2008 10:50 PM:
Ah, hello there. good to know the abduction rumor was untrue! :-)