Re: Loadable keyboards

[q-funk@megacom.net (Martin-Eric Racine)]

 >MR>This makes it MUCH easier to remap keyboards, contrary to the KBD
 >MR>format, where you always have to guess that greek Theta will result
 >MR>in "e circumflex" because it's ascii 233.
 >
 >:-O why to guess? Before remapping keyboard you have to remap your font,
 >so greek Theta gets replaced with "E circ" and then you can easily edit
 >it in any/Clocky keyboard editor.

You should *NEVER* alter the mapping of the system font.  
Character-set remapping should always be application-dependant.

ISO-8859 character-sets are a redefinition of what ascii 160-255 
generate as accented letters. They are NOT a "re-map".

The problem with using the KBD format and a keyboard editor is,
you're trying to remap the keyboard to access another existing
system character, which is not what we need here. 

For accessing ISO character sets, what you really want is to change
the rule of which ascii code a letter/punctuation combo will generate.
For instance, É (E-acute) is 144 using the MS-DOS (ie: system) map, 
but it's 201 using ISO-8859-1.  It means E+apostrophe must generate 
a different ascii value. 

 >This is very surprising for me - it's not usual to replace system font
 >in other countries? I must admit I have no greek or other symbols in my
 >system font - there are 30 Czech characters, about 20 semigraphics
 >symbols and the rest, which is not used anywhere.

You may use a different font styling that is aesthetically more
pleasing, but if you alter what the 128-255 range generates, an
application that uses the copyright or other symbol in its menu 
or dialogs won't display the correct info anymore.

 >If it's not so common to replace system font, I could easily add an
 >option into Clocky or JCLKTools for loading system font. But I thought
 >everybody used NVDI or NOVA-VDI for that.

Again, remapping the keyboard should be application-dependant.
Josk gave other reasons about this, and I concur with him.

 >MR>simple enough to use, even on this US keyboard.  When I code or mail
 >MR>Atari stuff (80% of the time), I can access every keys very quickly,
 >MR>but when I do private mail in french or finnish (the remaining 20%),
 >MR>I use Alt-key combinations.
 >
 >You may try to switch to another keymap when writting private mails -
 >it's perhaps even easier to omit the Alt key and type french or finnish
 >chars directly.

Changing the location of keys is disrupting, but not altering which
ascii value will be generated under an application that uses Speedo
mapping, to access characters not normally available in MS-DOS set.

I suggest you download the ISO-8859-1 font package I made, from my
homepage (www.megacom.net/~q-funk/) and examin the CKBD table I've
made to use it. Then, compare the results of Alt/E/apostrophe when
using my map, versus using it with "reset system map" default.  

After, try Alt/E/^ and see; E-circumflex doesn't exist under MS-DOS,
but that key combination will correctly work on an application using 
an ISO-8859-1 compliant font, such as NEWSie with my font.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Alt/E/apostrophe should always
equal E-acute, but which ascii value this will require differs, and
provision has to be made for other letter/symbol combinations.


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