oguys,
I'm still working with the 30 day free trial to determine if I, as a blind user, can use X3.  I've discovered something strange.  I'm trying to select a region of a MIDi track.  Unfortunately, when I select CTRL F6 for the start point, and CTRL+Shift+F6 for the End point, those points are not selected.  I know this because I have enough vision to see this.  when I press the , to select a track, the entire track is selected.  
 
Curiously, if I go through the menus and hit ENTER on the from and Thru points, hitting , does select the region within the track.  I know this because I can see it.  
 
If it matters, I am using a laptop with a full numeric keypad.  Should I choose laptop over desktop keyboard layout?  Is there even a way to make that choice?  
 
I guess I just want to know why those commands don't seem to work even though they are identified in the keybindings as being attached to those functions.  
 
Finally, I wonder if there are commands in X3 designed to bring the user immediately to the start or end of a selection, particularly if that selection is not an entire track.  
 
any help greatly appreciated.  
 
Best,
Kevin
 

They've never worked for me either. I thought I messed up the mapping and just used the menu. I just now looked at the mapping and it looks like they're defined correctly. I'm using a desktop with a M$ keyboard. Same problem.

I don' think these have ever worked correctly. I re-assigned F9 and F10 to these functions when X1 first came out because that's what they'd been since dinosaurs roamed the halls of Twelve Tone Systems. You could as easily force assign Ctrl+F6 and Ctrl+Shift+F6, and that would probably work as well.
 
And I'm guessing with the blindness that you want to use keyboard shortcuts as much as possible, but there are buttons in the Selection module in the Control Bar to set From and Thru as well.

Guys,
 
thanks for totally making my night.  Thanks to you all, and another blind friend who gave me his KBN file, I now have a Set From to Now, Set Thru to Now, Go to Start of Selection and Go to End of Selection hotkeys.  

Sorry.  Forgot one more thing.  Do any of you guys know of a hotkey combination to open the Synth Rack?  so far, I don't even see one in the View menu.  there was one there since Cakewalk 5.  Yes, I'm a dinosaur, too.
 

Hit the letter 'B' on your computer keyboard to open the Browser Pane.
 
Bob Bone
 

I just discovered using Alt, I, Y brings up insert synth and then you can press the first letter of the synth name and hit enter and it inserts the synth and bypasses the browser all together which is perfect for my workflow. I program the whole thing as a macro using autohotkey and then you can assign one key to open and do this.

If you use one synth all the time you can even set up a hotkey to insert that one synth.

Another thing that helped me a lot was to disable the screenset hot keys 0 through 9. These were getting in the way if I had to enter a number in a synth via the keyboard and instead it changed screensets.

You can bind any key to a Do Nothing function which basically disables it.

Once again, thanks everyone for their responses. I am aware of the ALT I Y idea for loading a soft synth and bypassing the Synth Rack.   What I'm interested in is a command that brings up the Synth Rack if you have several synths loaded.  This way, you can down arrow through them until you get to he one you want.  then, you can press one more key to open its properties page and get to work.  
 
If you go to the Browser by typing B, you still have to click an icon with a mouse to make sure you're in the Synth Rack and not somewhere else.  That's what I'm trying to avoid/prevent.  
 
thanks again for any help.  
Kevin
 

Once again, thanks everyone for their responses. I am aware of the ALT I Y idea for loading a soft synth and bypassing the Synth Rack.   What I'm interested in is a command that brings up the Synth Rack if you have several synths loaded.  This way, you can down arrow through them until you get to he one you want.  then, you can press one more key to open its properties page and get to work.  
 
If you go to the Browser by typing B, you still have to click an icon with a mouse to make sure you're in the Synth Rack and not somewhere else.  That's what I'm trying to avoid/prevent.  
 
thanks again for any help.  
Kevin