On 30 Oct 2010, at 09:34, Richmond wrote:

> Err . . . anybody know a way, within LiveCode/RunRev to detect an end-user's
> physical keyboard?????

I am someone who uses and analyses a lot of games, where keyboard features are 
often mapped to position instead of char-output. Basically the answer to your 
question is no. Sure, there are ways to find out some information about the 
layout, but keybord layouts are not normed in any way beyond "thats how they 
always did it".

A simple example is the difference of an older swiss-german mac layout versus 
an american layout (those being the two i have here right now):

for swiss layout vs us layout:
the row that starts with q has one more key at the rightmost position
the row that starts with a has one less key at the rightmost position
the row that starts with z doesn't start with z, it starts with <, and then 
continues with y (y and z are always switched in german layouts vs us layouts).
The return key is not a double key in width, but instead a double height (with 
some adjustment to width because the rows are shifted slightly compared to each 
other, producing a hook-looking key)
Instead of a second alt key to the right of the spacebar, there's a return key 
on my ibook (newer macs don't have that anymore)
Obviously a lot of chars are mixed and moved around, for example shift- and 
then the numbers at the top (from 1 to 0):
swiss german: +"*ç%&/()=
usa: !...@#$%^&*()

now, on my windows pc (swiss german layout), there's an alt-gr key to the right 
of the spacebar, which allows the typing of funny chars like |,€,¢, etc.
there's also a windows and a menu key, which macs won't ever have (they have 
the command key instead).

And that's only comparing three keyboards that I have here. If you want to 
catalogue all keyboard layouts of the world, I'm sure you could sell big buck 
licenses to all the game developers who do this stuff on a far less 
sophisticated ground: Every user can adjust his preferred layout nilly willy, 
and only the most often seen ones are (maybe) build in. 

And then there's dvorak.

For example Starcraft 2, one of the biggest budget games of the year, has fixed 
layouts to reduce cheating vectors. these layouts are always bugged for a 
certain percent of the community, and the answer to those is: memorise or lose 
the game.


-- 

official ChatRev page:
http://bjoernke.com?target=chatrev

Chat with other RunRev developers:
go stack URL "http://bjoernke.com/chatrev/chatrev1.3b3.rev";

_______________________________________________
use-revolution mailing list
use-revolution@lists.runrev.com
Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription 
preferences:
http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution

Reply via email to