Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!cbmvax!carolyn
From: carolyn@cbmvax.UUCP (Carolyn Scheppner CATS)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: to RAWKEY or not to RAWKEY
Message-ID: <3010@cbmvax.UUCP>
Date: 23 Dec 87 20:44:54 GMT
References: <552@oscvax.UUCP> <22235@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <121@laic.UUCP>
Reply-To: carolyn@cbmvax.UUCP (Carolyn Scheppner CATS)
Organization: Commodore Technology, West Chester, PA
Lines: 50

In article <121@laic.UUCP> darin@laic.UUCP (Darin Johnson) writes:
>> >I want to know when the key that is in the position that
>> >the 'A' key normally is in (I don't care if the guy's using
>> >DVORAK or whatever, the position is what's important) goes
>> >down and when it goes up.  That's all.
>> 
>> RAWKEY is your option.  It will return the position of any key pressed
>> or released while your window is active.
>
>Yes, but will this work on the 2000's?  There are some commercial
>games that I know of that work on 500's, 1000's, but not on the
>2000's.  To me it seems that this is due to using RAWKEY, but I may be wrong.

   No - when you use RAWKEY, the keyboard is still being read by the system
software which has no problem with any of the slightly different keyboards.
The things that don't work with some keyboards are straight-to-the-hardware
programs that bypassed the OS and were doing their own keyboard handshaking.


>How would someone go about getting the physical key location without
>using VANILLAKEY but still be portable to the new machines?  A common 
>key grouping (hjkl) could end up very awkward to someone with a usa2 keymap.

   Not sure if I understand you.  I gather you want to use, for instance,
a physically close group of keys for something like a directional keypad.

   For instance, you want them to use the keys where OUR H-J-K-L are,
you want to read raw key position (RAWKEY) but you also want to know
what their keycaps say so you can tell them "Use the X-X-X-X keys to..."
You could open the console device with unit=-1 and use the GetKeyMap
command to see what their keycaps are.  OR, just feed all the raw values
you are interested in to RawKeyConvert (ConsoleDevice function) and
see what you get back.  That would be easier.


   OR - Are you asking How Can I Get All of the Keys in an Internationally
Compatible Manner (and deal with them as ascii characters regardless of
their position) ?

   Answer to this is either use the console.device, or use RAWKEY and
DeadKeyConvert() routine (as shown in Enhancer manual and 1.2 ReadMes).

 
  
-- 
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Carolyn Scheppner -- CATS   >>Commodore Amiga Technical Support<<
                     UUCP  ...{allegra,ihnp4,rutgers}!cbmvax!carolyn 
                     PHONE 215-431-9180
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