Well, If I were making something to support typing those extra/alternate characters, the driver would probably behave like this…
Normal typing and continuous key press would behave as normal. This includes key repeating at the set typographic rate. I would implement some of the techniques used in my gaming engine to support keys that are not supported by DOS and DOS programs. By default, it would probably bind to the Fn (Function) key. However, could be changed to any physical key such as the Win, Left-Alt, Right-Shift. Or even very special keys like Play, WWW, Search, etc. When the Fn (The default bound key) was pressed, the driver would wait for another key such as “a”. Each time the letter “a” was pressed it would cycle through the special keys configured for Fn+a. These combinations could be different for Shift+Fn+a. The cycling would just involve sending a Backspace then the New Key. When the user finally released the Fn key, the system should continue processing keys normally. The driver would also probably support longer key sequences and macros. Like possibly Fn+Ctrl+D could type out the current date. The driver could include “accessibility” support. When enabled, do things like disable autorepeat and AUTOSHIFT letters when the key is held down. Plus allow making Fn sticky. Press once for special combinations, press again to go back to normal. Etc. This is all stuff I’ve considered adding directly to the V8Turbo Command Interpreter/Shell. Along with support for different such mappings based on what program is running. Hopefully, I’ll find the time to return to it’s development at some point. I want to restructure it to make it even more efficient before continuing much further. I just don’t have the spare time at present. :-) Jerome _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
