alt grid for labels under Linux?

On 9/19/2012 3:17 PM, Clark Jones wrote:

Under Linux (Fedora 17 / Gnome 3), using Eagle 6.2 I have a net (wire) in a schematic that I want to "label" (near a connector).  When I use the Alt key, I can move the label around with the mouse at the alternate (finer) grid, but when I left click to "drop" it, the cursor flickers indicating that the click was received, but the label is not dropped.  If I release the Alt key, it goes back to the main (coarser) grid, but will respond correctly to the left click.

 

In the lab, we have Eagle 6.2 under M$ W7, and when I copied the .sch and .brd files to it, and tried the Alt key with label there, it worked "as expected".

 

I don't claim to be an Eagle expert, so may have accidentally messed up my setup.  I thought I'd done this under Linux a few weeks ago, but can't get it to work now.  (I've been using both machines to work on various circuits, so might have done it all on the lab machine.)

 

(Yes, I can think of at least two work-arounds - using Properties to move the label after dropping it, and defining a different grid with 0.01" as the normal spacing, but both seem rather cumbersome to me.)

 

Any other ideas?

 

Hi Clark,

I use Ubuntu, but what I found is that the Alt Key can be absorbed by

the OS. Under Ubuntu I go System -> Preferences -> Windows. Make sure

the Movement Key is set to something other than alt(the default).

When you do this the OS will not absorb the click and pass it on to EAGLE.

You'll have to find out where those preferences are stored in Fedora but

I'm sure it's the same problem.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Thanks, Jorge!

After reading your suggestion, and fiddling with it a while, I finally did something I've been thinking about for months: switching to KDE from that horrid Gnome 3 excrement.

In case others are wondering:  go to fedoraproject.org/wiki/kde and follow the instructions to get KDE going on your system.  (It takes a bit of tinkering, and it has a completely different appearance than Gnome 3.  If you had [giant] downgraded from Gnome 2, it will feel a bit more comfortable.)  Anyway, use the "f" icon in the lower left corner and click on "System Settings".  That pops up a screen with a bunch of option icons.  Click on the icon labeled "Window Behavior", which switches to another window where you'll also have to click on the "Window Behavior" icon.  Then click on the "Window Actions" tab, and for "Modifier key" click on "Alt" and change it to "Meta", then click on "Apply".

I know, sounds complicated, but it works like a charm...

Thanks again, Jorge!

Clark

P.S.  Switching to KDE also got me several other benefits -- multiple desktops, and being able to get the laptop computer to "hibernate", amongst others.

On 19/09/12 21:03, Jorge Garcia wrote:

 

I use Ubuntu, but what I found is that the Alt Key can be absorbed by

the OS. Under Ubuntu I go System -> Preferences -> Windows. Make sure

the Movement Key is set to something other than alt(the default).

The pedant in me wants to point out that it's NOT THE OS that does this,

but the desktop environment / window manager. I use both icewm and xfce

and they both default to this behaviour, but like all Linux DEs/WMs they

are configurable to work how you need to.

On XFCE go to Settings->Window Manager Tweaks, pick the "Accessibility"

tab and set the "Key used to move windows" to Meta (the Windows key on

normal PC keyboards).

On icewm it's a preference option (edit the /etc/icewm/preferences

file). I think it's

    ClientWindowMouseActions=0

but I'm not sure.