Navigate without a mouse?

Hi,

I have just installed RISC OS on a Raspberry Pi, with a keyboard connected, but no mouse (I don’t own one). What keyboard shortcuts can I use to start doing things in the OS, without having to navigate with a mouse? Really I’d just like to fire up a terminal/console and start poking around. I’ve tried using the Windows key, Ctrl, Shift, Alt, ESC etc, and various combinations thereof, to get a menu of some sort to open, to no avail.

I assume it is possible to use RISC OS without a mouse?

Cheers,

Chris

EDIT | Apologies, never mind, I should learn to depend less on Google and actually browse documentation ;)

RISC OS was never originally designed to run without a mouse. There are modules which map some keyboard keys to move the pointer. (It would be sensible if in the absence of a mouse, one of these were used automatically, perhaps a feature request is warranted.)

There has been work on keyboard shortcuts, but I’m not certain it has been implemented to a stage of not needing a mouse.

F12 gives you a command line at the bottom of the screen. You could probably copy a suitable module to the fat area of the SD card (with a different OS), then in RISC OS load it using the command line, then install it properly when it’s running. I would expect it to be easier to borrow a mouse to get it running though.

MouseKey do so.

I assume it is possible to use RISC OS without a mouse?

You can, as has been said, use a module to fake a mouse.

However, since the original RISC OS machines were custom systems with mice included, there was never a question of “will it work without a mouse” like for Windows… So the degree of mouseless control there is not possible (yet?) on RISC OS. Case in point – moving around dialogue boxes and selecting options.

Case in point – moving around dialogue boxes and selecting options.

I must admit that having spent a lot of years on other OSes I do now go to some lengths to have option and radio buttons mapped to Ctrl-key combinations. Having to switch from keyboard to mouse is irritating.

I’m not sure I’d like RISC OS to default to the Windows behaviour of tab moving a widget highlight, but it might be nice to knock up a module which did such a thing. Tricky though.

Do not forget … RISC OS without a mouse, Acorn has begun with it. My A4 has none. [FN] + Q, W, E = mouse buttons and [FN] + arrow keys = move pointer. ;-)

I use a cheap £5 ASDA “Smart Price” u.s.b optical mouse with my 256MB Pi. The scroll wheel acts as the middle button. You can have problems if you use a low-quality power source for your Pi.

The old program !Warfarin is a possibility for rudimentary keyboard control if you don’t like using a mouse. I used it on my old A3000 computer when the mouse went “phut” and I had difficulty sourcing a replacement Acorn compatible 3 button mouse. The Dutch Risc OS club have a 32 bit version – http://www.bigbenclub.nl/bbc/astarchive/2005/23-02/pakket/warfar.htm which works on the Pi with Risc OS 5.

The program is unzipped within Risc OS and put into the root directory($) – a mouse will be needed to do that I would imagine :) Most people use !SparkPlug to unzip files.
As mentioned above, press the f12 key to go to the command line and type !Warfarin next to the * on the command line.
Press the Enter key twice to return to the desktop. Pressing the Alt key and an arrow key together will navigate the mouse pointer around the desktop. The Alt and PageUp key will open a program icon. A full !Help file is contained within the !Warfarin program icon (shift key and mouse double-click together or Alt, Shift and PageUp together using !Warfarin key presses). This will give full user instructions.
Hope this is helpful. It really is easier with a mouse.

If you can acquire a mouse, your experience of RISC OS will be much more positive. If you have to use it from the keyboard, you will miss out on a lot of the finer points of an OS which is really nice to use. You will likely get bored quickly and format your SD card with something else.