Latched and Locked Modifiers
XKB allows a modifier to be locked or latched, other than being in its regular state. Normally, a modifier is active exactly when it is pressed, like the Shift. However, a modifier may also be locked, like the Caps Lock modifier. In particular, when a modifier is locked, it remains active until it is explicitly deactivated. An intermediate condition between regular and locked is the latched state: When a modifier is latched, it remains active, but only until the next non-modifier key is pressed.
XKB allows a client application to explicitly latch or lock a modifier. Moreover, an application can bind a key press or release to a modifier state change. This way, a modifier may automatically become latched or locked whenever a key is pressed or released.
Read more about this topic: X Keyboard Extension
Famous quotes containing the words latched and/or locked:
“Dry as a tomb, your coloured lids
Shall not be latched while magic glides
Sage on the earth and sky;
There shall be corals in your beds,
There shall be serpents in your tides,
Till all our sea-faiths die.”
—Dylan Thomas (1914–1953)
“... I was crying partly because I felt that this was expected of me, partly from genuine repentance, but partly also because of a deeper grief which is peculiar to childhood and not easy to convey: a sense of desolate loneliness and helplessness, of being locked up not only in a hostile world but in a world of good and evil where the rules were such that it was actually not possible for me to keep them.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)