Carl, Peter,
When I was testing i18n Win98 I hooked up different language USB keyboards plus the default keyboard using the normal connector and after adding the locales in the Keyboard Settings I was able to type with all keyboards according to the locale settings in their respective different languages. Yes, we can't predefine all locale-keyboard variants, but we could create special layouts and assign them to a locale variant. So at least I see the option to be able to map a subset of language variants and their keyboard layouts to the keyboard language recognition drivers. Ok, somebody would have to hack the .VXDs to replace the hardcoded mapping, but it isn't that much of a task. I poked bits into them to switch the recognized locale to automate the testing of all supported keyboards, comparing created character by key code with the defined character for that location.
So I see no big issue adding a Deseret and a Klingon keyboard in a daisy chain with a German and a US keyboard. It would just be nice if users could create sig's to define the layout. Now all I need is the Klingon font, thanks to this thread I found the Deseret font.
- Dave
| "Carl W. Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 10/03/01 02:32 PM
|
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> cc: Subject: RE: Deseret keyboard (was:Re: Special Type Sorts Tray 2001) |
Peter,
I was the chairman of the keyboard standards committee for ACCESS.bus which was the predecessor the USB. However Intel got impatient and developed the USB standard. Unfortunately they only reserved 8 bits for the keyboard language identifier. Had they done a better job you could really use the field in the device driver and be able to use two keyboards with different keyboard language layout codes. I am not clever enough to figure out how to encode 6700 language in 8 bits. It is even worse because you can have different language layouts. For example there are several very different French keyboard layouts. The multiply it by the non-language variants such as numeric keypad layout or function/ime/special keys
With a $10 keyboard it would be easy to plug in another keyboard when you needed to type in the language or have two keyboards in different languages plugged in at the same time.
Carl
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 03, 2001 11:11 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: Deseret keyboard (was:Re: Special Type Sorts Tray 2001)
On 10/03/2001 10:48:29 AM John H. Jenkins wrote:
>Getting screen shots of my Deseret keyboard layout is a less than
>trivial task, so I'll try to describe it word-wise...
Except for the Caps Lock behaviour, this layout would be fairly straightforward to setup for Windows using Keyman. A few stored arrays and three rules ought to do it:
+ [K_Q] > deadkey(1)
+ any(RegKey) > index(RegChar,1)
deadkey(1) + any(DK_Key) > index(DK_Char,2)
Keyman 5 doesn't provide a way to make keystrokes sensitive to the caps lock state. But the English QWERTY keyboard is really a distinct keyboard layout, and I would be more inclined to have a Deseret layout be Deseret only and get users to switch to an English QWERTY keyboard (or whatever other keyboard they might want to use) rather than mix two different writing systems into a single layout using the Caps Lock state to switch between them.
