Would Like to Change NumLock Behavior to Match MS Windows Behavior

[Gilbert Sullivan]

On 09/16/2011 04:13 AM, Mișu Moldovan wrote:
> On 15.09.2011 21:21, Gilbert Sullivan wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>> To make matters worse, there's no indicator light for NumLock on this
>> keyboard, so I'm constantly getting it in the wrong state when I need to
>> be concentrating on the text rather than what I'm doing with the danged
>> NumLock control. I try to select a bunch of text and wind up typing a
>> numeral, or I try to move and wind up blowing away something that was
>> already selected.
>
> Try a keyboard indicator with a dedicated led for a visual cue of the
> NumLock state. To easily switch the state of the NumLock key you could
> try XkbOptions in xorg.conf or a dedicated program like numlockx.

Thank you for the suggestions.

By "keyboard indicator" I take it that you mean software that places a 
telltale in the notification area, or are you talking about an actual 
piece of hardware?

I do a lot of editing every day -- about 12-14 hours' worth. I'll 
probably eventually get used to this keyboard layout and the way I 
currently have to jump through hoops to use the numeric keypad or just 
deal with the tiny dedicated keys. Essentially, setting up a telltale or 
making it easier to switch the NumLock on and off amount to giving 
myself a little help in getting used to the keyboard, but probably won't 
be as satisfactory for me as altering the NumLock / Shift key behavior 
itself.

I bought this keyboard because I mistakenly thought that I'd be able to 
use the numeric keypad for editing functions the way such keypads work 
in Windows -- not that I'm the least bit tempted to go back to any 
version of that OS.

>
>
>> In Gnome there's a setting in gnome-keyboard-properties that I found
>> today while researching this. I didn't see this setting in the Xfce
>> keyboard properties dialog. I looked for documentation on this, but I've
>> drawn a blank so far.
>
> Another possibility would be xmodmap, for some ideas, take a look at
> http://wiki.robotz.com/index.php/Numlock_State_&_Keyboard_Mapping .
>
> I currently have a keyboard without the numeric keypad, so I can't test
> or vouch for anything.
>
> HTH,

Yes, thank you very much for this information. I'm going to investigate 
that carefully. Even if I don't get exactly what I want, I'll at least 
learn something.

I appreciate your help!

Best regards,
Gilbert