Re: Loadable keyboards

[Jo Even Skarstein <joska@nuts.edu>]

On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Martin-Eric Racine wrote:

>  >The keyboard layout is loaded from file C:\MULTITOS\KEYBD.TBL. The format
>  >is described in the Compendium (though Compendium says the file has to be
>  >named KEYTBL.TBL, what is wrong IMHO).
> 
> The description on 4.13 is about as clear as mud...

I'm not sure what you mean, the format is pretty straight-forward. I'm
not aware of any applications that can create/edit it though, so if
you want to use it you might have to use a hex-editor (or better, qed
in binary-mode)...

------------------8<---------------------

TOS versions 5.0 and greater support the loading of external keyboard
tables when the '_AKP' cookie is present. In this case, if a file called
'KEYTBL.TBL' is found in the '\MULTITOS' directory of the boot drive, it
will be loaded upon bootup to provide keyboard mapping changes. The format
of the file is as follows:


Magic Table Identifier Word

This should be a WORD value of 0x2771.


Unshifted Keyboard Table

This is a 128 byte table of ASCII codes that are generated when no
keyboard shift keys are being held down. There is one entry for each
possible scan code.


Shifted Keyboard Table 

This is a 128 byte table of ASCII codes that are generated when the shift
key is being held down. There is one entry for each possible scan code.


CAPS-LOCK Keyboard Table

This is a 128 byte table of ASCII codes thatare generated when caps-lock
is engaged and no shift keys are being held. There is one entry for each
possible scan code.


Alternate-Unshifted Keyboard Table 

This is a variable length table consisting of two-byte entries. Each entry
consists of a scan code and the ASCII code generated when that scan code 
occurs while the alternate key (and no other) keyboard shift keys are
being held. The list is terminated by a single NULL byte.


Alternate-Shifted Keyboard Table 

This is a variable length table consisting of two-byte entries. Each entry 
consists of a scan code and the ASCII code generated when that scan code 
occurs while the alternate key and the shift key is being held. The list 
is terminated by a single NULL byte.


Alternate CAPS-LOCK Keyboard Table

This is a variable length table consisting of two-byte entries. Each entry 
consists of a scan code and the ASCII code generated when that scan code 
occurs while the alternate key is being held with the caps-lock mode in 
effect. The list is terminated by a single NULL byte.

----------------8<-------------------

It would have been nice if N.AES implemented this, if anybody on this
list has any contact with it's authors then please ask them :-)


/*
** Jo Even Skarstein    http://www.stud.ntnu.no/~josk/
**
**    beer - maria mckee - atari falcon - babylon 5
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