RE: [h-e-w] How to use the menubar with keyboard?

[Nascif Abousalh-Neto]

You may want to take a look at the tmm package.
In Emacs 21.1 (I believe that in 20.7 as well) it can be accessed by the keybind M-`

M-` runs the command tmm-menubar
   which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `tmm'.
(tmm-menubar &optional X-POSITION)

Text-mode emulation of looking and choosing from a menubar.
See the documentation for `tmm-prompt'.
X-POSITION, if non-nil, specifies a horizontal position within the menu bar;
we make that menu bar item (the one at that position) the default choice.

;;; tmm.el --- text mode access to menu-bar

;; Copyright (C) 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001
;;   Free Software Foundation, Inc.

;; Author: Ilya Zakharevich <address@hidden>
;; Maintainer: FSF

;; This file is part of GNU Emacs.

Enjoy,
        Nascif

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Epstein [mailto:address@hidden]
> Sent: Friday, February 22, 2002 9:23 AM
> To: Tuomas Salo; Jeff Rancier
> Cc: address@hidden
> Subject: Re: [h-e-w] How to use the menubar with keyboard?
>
>
> Tuomas,
>
> I have followed this discussion with interest since some of
> us with physical disabilities use voice recognition software
> to control Emacs, including its menus.  In particular, many
> of us use a commercial product called Dragon
> NaturallySpeaking Professional.
>
> It turns out that there are problems with getting
> NaturallySpeaking to recognize the Emacs menus, but you can
> work around it by "priming" each Emacs frame.  E.g., once an
> Emacs frame becomes the foreground Windows window, you can
> (by a variety of means) press and release the Alt key.  Once
> this is done, the standard NaturallySpeaking commands work
> correctly, e.g., "Click Tools", "Click Buffers", etc., to
> bring down the different menus.  I'm not sure what means
> Dragon is using to figure out the menu titles and how to
> select the right one (it points, clicks, and releases the
> mouse).  It doesn't appear to rely upon Windows Active
> Accessibility (AA), since I temporarily disabled that feature
> in NaturallySpeaking, and the menus selection still worked in
> Emacs (although I know that it doesn't work with some other
> applications like VisualStudio when AA is disabled).
>
> My point is that if Dragon can do it, you can do it too!  But
> I'm not sure how...
>
> Here are some links to a discussion from a few months ago:
>    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoiceCoder/message/1990
>    http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoiceCoder/message/1993
> You might need to subscribe to the VoiceCoder group to see
> these messages ... I'm not sure.
>
> Oh, you might also want to peruse w32fns.c in the Emacs
> sources to see how the Alt key is managed by Emacs ... you
> might say over-managed ;-)
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> -Jonathan
>
> At 05:35 AM 2/22/2002 , Tuomas Salo wrote:
>
>
> >Jeff,
> >
> >thanks for the information. But my problem remains: it's not
> even nearly
> >possible to push Alt-F for file menu. Besides, I can't find where to
> >reconfigure the menu bar!  The main menu bar seems to be hardcoded to
> >emacs.exe. (But I was unable to find it with a resource editor.) I
> >experimented a little by changing the string "Options" to
> "O&tions" in the
> >executable, which gave me a nice underlining ("O_t_ions").
> I'd be happy to
> >enter the accelerators to the source myself, if I ever
> them... Maybe I'll
> >have to look at the sources again.
> >
> >The other problem:
> >
> >I tried all combinations of "(setq w32-alt-is-meta nil)"
> and/or "(setq
> >w32-pass-alt-to-system t)", but the Alt key still seems to
> be intercepted
> >by Emacs, since Alt-T doesn't open my custom "Otions" menu. Alt-F4
> >or Alt-Space don't work either. I thought that w32-pass-alt-to-system
> >should make them work, but apparently it doesn't.
> >
> >So, I'm still quite far from the standard Windows menu behavior.
> >
> >
> >tuomas
> >
> >
> >
> >On Thu, 21 Feb 2002, Jeff Rancier wrote:
> >
> > > I have (thanks to someone on the list) the following
> function defined:
> > >
> > > (defun jbr-w32-simulate-Alt-tap ()
> > >   (interactive)
> > >   (w32-send-sys-command 61696))
> > >
> > > which I have bound to
> > >
> > > (global-set-key   [C-tab]           'jbr-w32-simulate-Alt-tap)
> > >
> > > Then I hit Ctrl-tab, the Buffers menu button depresses. 
> At that time I can
> > > just hit any of the first letters of any other menu
> items, and then expand
> > > if there's only one with that letter, or they toggle
> between multiple ones.
> > >
> > > Jeff
>
>
>
> Jonathan Epstein                               
> address@hidden
> Head, Unit on Biologic Computation              (301)402-4563
> Office of the Scientific Director               Bldg 31, Room 2A47
> Nat. Inst. of Child Health & Human Development  31 Center Drive
> National Institutes of Health                   Bethesda, MD 20892
>
>