#23 blinking lights indicator

[Anonymous]

in the last several snapshots, the blinking lights indicator is acting
up a bit. It blinks and gets the persons attention, but once the mail
is checked, the blinking stops, as it should, but the numlock light
and function gets turned off as well. It is a minor bug, but gets
annoying very quickly.

[Nobody/Anonymous]

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The lights indicator works oddly for me too. They all light up, and
blink -off- rather than blinking -on-.

The CAPS_LOCK also stays on and I cannot turn it off without messing
witht he Keymap prefrences.

[Alan Ellis]

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user_id=235688

I am the same preson who added the previous comment. I have found
out that my problem with not being able to shut off CAPS is because
I disabled my CAPS_LOCK key (yes, I hate it -that- much).

OK, so the blinky lights indictor has a few of problems for me.

1) It doesn't blink so much as they all turn on and flicker a bit.

2) they do not reset to the last state, they all stay on.

3) This feature is kind dangerous because it changes the keystate
which can interfere with typing and such.

I created a test app, and I can get the lights to go back to thier
previous state after the stop blinking, I'll see if I can't fix the
Scooby code for that and the bad flicker problem as well.

I will also see if I can't find some code that will just set the
lights to flash without actually changing the key-state.

Alan

[Alan Ellis]

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user_id=235688

OK, more on this, I have noticed the folowing:

1) The lights blink correctly for a but, but then if I hold down a
modifier key, they start to act up. I can see in the code why this
happens, but am unsure what the best course of action about this
would be (seeing as the code actually -changes- the modifiers.)

2) My code for resetting the correct mods upon stoping the blinking
works.

I'll let you all know if I find that code for changing the lights
without changing modifiers.

Alan

[Alan Ellis]

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OK, after investigating it would appear that you can only have one
open handle to the keyboard device at once, which the kb_mouse input
device has.

What this means is that the only realitic way to have the lights
blink withot affecting the key state is to add the support to the
operating system (which I am tempted to do...).

The fact is that you -could- write a driver to do this, but that is
iffy at best (AFAIK, I am not a driver writer, just a lowly dev
tools engineer).

For now, I guess I'll just settle for fixing the current blinky
code...

Alan

[Alan Ellis]

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user_id=235688

OK, I have fixed the LEDIndicator class to blink witout acting up
when you hold modifier keys down. It also now reverts your key state
to what it was before.

The only real issue is the one that I had before that if the lights
are blinking and you are typing you will get CAPS at random as the
key states are actually changed...

Anyway, if you would like these changes, please contact me!

=D

Alan