Hi standard7452,
forum member
SFR has done some fantastic work developing a couple of scripts (attached below) that allow a Puppy to be fully controlled from a single keyboard switch. In their current form the scripts respond to the Pause/Break key that you have requested (and can initially be tested by anyone without having to disassemble the keyboard).
Unfortunately I have not used GOK or Onboard so I don't know if the script will suit your needs with those programs, but I have tested each of them with the xvkbd onscreen keyboard and the combination is very powerful.
The user only needs to run one of these scripts. Although they perform identical tasks they are visually different and it is up to the user to choose which best suits their needs/screen layout etc.
The scripts are as follows:
1)
Radar6 places a small window at bottom right of the screen and contains a rotating line within a circle. The rotating line determines the direction that the mouse will travel, and the pause key determines the actions to be performed.
2)
Navbar2 places a navigation bar across the top of the screen and uses 8 arrows to display the intended direction of mouse travel, and again, uses the pause key to control actions.
*** DO NOT RUN BOTH SCRIPTS AT THE SAME TIME ***
How does a single key control the actions? Both Radar and Navbar alternate between "choose direction" mode and "choose action" mode and the user simply presses the pause key when they see their preferred direction/action highlighted in the control window.
NOTE : SFR has done a lot of work to make these scripts perform well, but it is important to remember that there are many Pups, many browsers, and a variety of window managers to choose from. Your mileage may vary!! I have been testing with a small number of Pups, and will be testing more combinations, but my first recommendation is that Magoo (which is based on Precise) seems very compatible. There are screenshots below of Radar6 running on Magoo on my netbook. (obviously a bigger screen would suit most users...)
I will describe how I install Radar, but please note that I don't know a lot about the "right way" to do this. (I really don't know all the conventions about where things should go, and how they should be connected together, so I will describe what worked for me). I recommend that you try this script (or any new script for that matter...) on a fresh installation that does not contain important data. The script itself will not cause you any problems but if you are a bad driver and lose control of the mouse you have only youself to blame
If you want to trial Navbar instead of Radar you simply follow the same install steps.
1) Download the attached Radar6 (or Navbar) tar and extract it somewhere. Then place a copy of the extracted folder in /root
2) Click on the radar file inside that folder. You should see the radar window appear at bottom right of the screen. (It should appear on top of all other windows, but if not you may need to shrink other windows enough for it to be always visible)
3) Click the Pause key and you should see the mouse start to move in the direction shown by the radar screen. When you get to where you want to go just hit the pause button again and the radar screen will change to show you the actions you can choose. Just cycle through this process as required
Navbar is similar, but places the control window at the top of the screen so that it doesnt overlap maximised windows below it. At this stage I find radar a little easier to drive than navbar - but both have their advantages.
xvkbd
xvkbd is not a requirement for Radar or Navbar, but it will be a valuable add-on for most users. If the user wishes to type into a document or browser etc you can have xvkbd running in the background, then navigate to the taskbar, select the xvkbd tab (which will bring xvkbd to the front) then click the "focus" key on the xvkbd keyboard, click on the chosen program window, then start typing the text on the keyboard and it will appear in the desired document window. I don't know how xvkbd compares with Onboard but it seems to work well and I found it quite easy to adapt to.
8bit mentioned this post which details the installation and use of xvkbd:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 712#261712
I think the pet will install on most systems, but if not you can manually install the files: Basically you put the xvkbd file somewhere like /usr/bin and click on it when you want it running, or else you can put the file (or a symlink) into the /root/startup folder if you want xvkbd running as soon as Puppy is started.
Some systems also require the two extra libraries mentioned in that post to be added into /usr/X11R7/lib, and then it is necessary to add symlinks with the correct names that xvkbd is looking for. This only has to be done once.
Magoo : Magoo is not a requirement for Radar or Navbar - it just happens to be a Puppy that I like (targeted at vision-challenged or menu-challenged users) and it seems to work well with radar and navbar. It is available as an iso or a .pet
http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 472#671472
Now all that's required is to find someone to offer a service grafting 3.5mm mono connectors onto old keyboards so we can tap into the pause key with a footswitch/headswitch or whatever...