Re: emulating keyboards with more keys

The Fn key normally does not have a scancode visible to the underlying OS,
but it has one in the low levels, caught by the BIOS or by the keyboard
driver which just maps a few Fn+Key combinations to translate them into one
or more standard keycodes, but filters all other combinations (instead of
exposing them for free use in an upper layer driver or application).

The scancode must certainly exist, otherwise the keyboard-specific drivers
that allow mapping those extra junk keys (Calc, IE, Word, Excel, Windows
Media Player, Windows Media Center, arrange windows in cascade or full
screen, next/previous window, next/previous tab in browsers, or the extra $
and € key on Acer notebooks...) would not work at all in Windows.

I would even suggest a standard Fn+Key combination to emulate any extra
keys missing but needed for international keyboards.

My current Logitech keyboard does not have a Windows Menu key between AltGr
and Fn, the Menu key is only at Fn+PrintScreen, but there are tons of other
extra junk keys, and there was ample enough space on the last row to map
this key I usually use to switch to the hypervisor when running in a
virtual OS, but there's no other easy replacement for this key, so I need
to use the 2nd Ctrl key for this hypervisor function. I had not seen that
this Menu/Application key was missing on the keyboard (it was not visible
on the product description when I bought it, and not visible on the photos
of the package, but the keyboard still displayed the "Designed for Windows
7".... Hmmmm really ? without the Application/Menu key ?)

2013/1/11 Stephan Stiller <stephan.stiller_at_gmail.com>

> Those are good ideas. (This doesn't solve it for desktop computers, but
> then the manufacturers of external keyboards clutter their products with
> superfluous extra junk keys. But such extra keys use extra scancodes; I
> don't know whether Fn generally has an associated scancode.)
>
Received on Fri Jan 11 2013 - 16:57:41 CST