I want to make a keyman keyboard layout that uses more buttons than found on the regular 104-key keyboard. I'm having trouble getting XP to recognise extra keys that it is supposed to handle (e.g. F13-F24), and in any case that is limited in how many buttons can be added because there are only a few defined key codes that are not found on regular keyboards.
So I'm thinking how else to do it. One idea is to set the extra keys to return a sequence of scan codes that you can't normally type, such as two consecutive UP codes. For example a-up a-up. Since the normal interesting work on the a/A key is done on the a-down, this shouldn't bother anything, right?
Second, what about shift states? If this new button always returns a-up a-up, can I still have keyman distinguish whether it is used with shift, cntrl, and alt?
Furthermore, can I abstract that in the keyman source file? That is, explain that MyKey1 is a-up,a-up in one place in the file, then refer to MyKey1 throughout? What about Shift-MyKey1?
--John
Topic Accessing Extra Buttons
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| # Accessing Extra Buttons 2006-12-05 04:43:17.923 | |
|---|---|
| John Dlugosz | |
| # RE: Accessing Extra Buttons 2006-12-05 15:27:28.690 | |
| Tavultesoft Tavultesoft Staff | Hi John,
It should certainly be possible to map the extra keys to odd sequences of scan codes. Keyman keyboards can not distinguish between keydown and keyup events, though, so you would have to each the extra key to a sequence of, for example, "$~$" or some similar sequence that is unlikely to be used. The resulting sequence could be interpreted by Keyman to output whatever symbol or sequence you need. The user could in this case replicate the extra key by just typing "$~$", so I'm not sure if that will work for you. Kind regards, Paul Durdin Tavultesoft Pty Ltd |