dvorak keyboard

I use the dvorak keyboard for typing. The second life program totally ignores the fact that I have this set as my keyboard. I can see that if you can't remap the movement and other keys then you have to look directly at the keyboard for those. Using WASD for movement on the dvorak keyboard would not be a pretty thing. But I feel like a mute since I have to hunt and peck to chat.

Halo on the PC directly uses the keys for movement, etc, but then the dvorak mapping works when you want to type in a message. Is there any chance of getting some kind of support for weird keyboard use?

Unfortunately, keyboard support w/SL has been very poor so far (just ask any international user!). You can, however, change the movement keys. Inside your Second Life folder on your hdd, there should be a keys.ini file. You can use that to change the movement keys from WASD to whatever you feel like. (Except, I don't think SPACE can be used as a movement key.)

Sorry I don't know the exact location of the file.

Good luck!

I have found the various configuration files by drilling down into the Second Life.app folder using Terminal, as if I try and drill into it using Finder it activates the application.

Not all of the configuration files are in the ~user/library/application support/secondlife/ folder unfortunately. Perhaps the Lindens can fix this.

if anyone knows an easier way to do this, please let us know.

If you right click on an app like Second Life and then chose "Show Package Contents" then you can look at the contents in the finder.

Thanks. I hope you were able to dig around and find the keymap file.

As James Miller put it, international users are also victims of this problem. I have a french keyboard layout, and it is not recognised either.

IMHO, movement is not a big issue here (because the keys are arbitrary anyways), it's for chatting that it raises a serious issue (the "mute feeling", or worse, the "stuttering idiot feeling".

I'm a dvorak typist too. I'm not clear from this thread... there is or isn't a way to change the keyboard config?

You can't change the keyboard configuration. If you could, you would be able to hack the action key mapping file so that you could move around normally, but since you can't change the keyboard layout that doesn't matter anyway.