YCP: YCP Builtins Prev Chapter 1. Basic aspects of "YaST look and feel" Next ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ The feel (2): control of ncurses text mode with key board Section information Valid since 2002/07/03 Last change 2002/07/25 File name General_layout.xml Author Sigi Olschner et al. Standardized function of F-keys in ncurses text mode Goal: Quick access to main functions during the use of YaST without mouse. Solution: Pre-defined standardized functions of F-keys. Remarks: Examples of main functions in the dialogue pages are: Help, Back/ Cancel, OK/Next/Save/Finish/Accept, Abort, New/Add/Create, Edit/Change/ Configure, Delete. This list of main functions may vary during the development of YaST, but avoid changing the used F-keys in the follwoing list. After a view onto the non-consistent mapping of function keys in YaST1 and the standardized function keys in some GUI environments, we decided to use location-location-compability. F1 (international standard) and F10 (YaST1) are fixed, the other main functions are aranged like their order on the display. Table 1-2. Function keys and their "commands"in short. Note! This table contain some placeholders. E.g. OK is a placeholder for OK, Finish, Accept, Next in this table ┌────┬────┬───┬────┬┬──────┬────┬──────┬────┬┬─────┬───┬─────┬────────────────┐ │F1 │F2 │F3 │F4 ││F5 │F6 │F7 │F8 ││F9 │F10│F11 │F12 │ ├────┼────┼───┼────┼┼──────┼────┼──────┼────┼┼─────┼───┼─────┼────────────────┤ │Help│Info│Add│Edit││Delete│Test│Expert│Back││Abort│OK │Apply│Reset to │ │ │ │ │ ││ │ │ │ ││ │ │ │defaults │ └────┴────┴───┴────┴┴──────┴────┴──────┴────┴┴─────┴───┴─────┴────────────────┘ Details about fixed function "areas" for F-keys in ncurses text mode F1 Help - Will open help window, if no help text is visible at the left side. The first textline in this help text is: "Press F1 again to show help about keyboard navigation" - If the help text is visible the help about keyboard navigation will pop up F2 Info or Description - E.g. used in printer vendor/model (Info) selection or software installation (Description) F3 Add or New or Create - E.g. Add is generally used in hardware setup. F4 Edit or Configure or Change - E.g. Edit is generally used in hardware setup - Use F4 to activate a link with focus on it in an rtf-field to start a YaST configuration module (= same as Return or Space F5 Delete - E.g. generally used in hardware setup - It also could be used to delete all of the text in a text entry field with the focus on it. F6 Test - E.g. used in printer test. Starts all kind of tests. F7 Expert or Details or Advanced - If such a button is available, direct access to this dialogue page - Beware of the problems if there are more buttons with this function, see the comments below in section trouble shooting. F8 Back in dialogue page or Cancel in pop up - Main navigation button in dialogue page F9 Abort or Cancel - E.g. an abort command in the configuration module - Or used as Cancel in a pop up message box. This is a substitution for ESC F10 Next or OK or Finish or Accept or Yes in pop up - Perhaps the captions for this button functions needs some reducement but you can make differences in meaning. F11 Apply - A kind of reserve for new YaST2 "applications" like the SCPM module. Apply will perform a task without closing the module F12 Reset to defaults - Restore data values to defaults - If no defaults available, delete all made settings in dialogue page to "empty" Figure 1-1. Example 1: F-keys use in ncurses text mode [80printer_] SuSE Linux 8.0, printer setup with text mode in kconsole; Picture data: 80printer_start01_nc.png; Origin: 80printer_start01_nc.xcf (Gimp) Comments to the figure above • F1 will switch focus to help • F3, F4, F5 are standardized buttons for YaST2 tables • F8, F9, F10 are the ain navigation buttons • F12 has no function for Set as default! Figure 1-2. Example 2: F-keys use in ncurses text mode [80printer_] SuSE Linux 8.0, printer setup with text mode in kconsole; Picture data: 80printer_add02_nc.png; Origin: 80printer_add02_nc.xcf (Gimp) Comments to the figure above • F1 will switch focus to help • F6 will start test • F8, F9, F10 are the main navigation buttons • F12 will reset default settings of "Connection" to "First parallel port (/ dev/lp0)" Figure 1-3. Example 3: F-keys use in ncurses text mode - no hints and some problems [80tvcard_s] SuSE Linux 8.0, tv card setup with text mode in kconsole with some problems to attach F-keys clear Picture data: 80tvcard_start_nc.png; Origin: 80tvcard_start_nc.png (Gimp) Comments to the figure above • F1 will switch focus to help • No tv card is already installed and none found so F3 (Add) will "add" a new tv card and F4 (Edit/Configure) will do it equal. If a tv card is already F3 and F4 have different functions • F8, F9, F10 available as main navigation Figure 1-4. Example 4: F-keys use in ncurses text mode - without hints [80tvcard_a] SuSE Linux 8.0, tv card setup with text mode in kconsole; Picture data: 80tvcard_add01_nc.png; Origin: 80tvcard_add01_nc.xcf (Gimp) Comments to the figure above • F1 will switch focus to help • F7 will start Details... • F8, F9, F10 are the main navigation buttons Trouble shooting • How to handle more than two buttons with same function on one dialogue page? First: Avoid to implement dialog pages with e.g. two Expert...-buttons or two Test-buttons by use of pop ups or an additional dialogue page. Second: To not activate the button but switch only focus to it, the second press of the F-key will jump to the next button with similar function