Adapting ANSI to ISO (NO physical mod) ?

[British]

How painful would it be ?

I was thinking of moving the <> key to the one ANSI has above enter (with AHK).
Also, I guess I'll lose my * key (the one lower-left of enter and above right shift).
Unless the ISO enter frees up 2 keys on its upper row.
(That's napkin-thinking, without accurately checking the layouts)

And that's IF Windows doesn't whine about forcing AZERTY on a QWERTY keyboard (if that's even possible).

Thoughts ?

[quadibloc]

AZERTY on a QWERTY keyboard is, in fact, exactly how real AZERTY keyboards are made.

A French ISO-layout keyboard with AZERTY on it, a German one with QWERTZ, or a United Kingdom one with QWERTY are all just the same keyboard with different things printed on the keys.

So, to use an ANSI keyboard for a language that takes an ISO keyboard, a way to do so without physically modifying the keyboard would be to make a modified keyboard layout in which the characters on the missing key are assigned to additional AltGr combinations.

[British]

Hmmm, so do I understand that, for instance, the ANSI left shift is using two switches with 2 different key codes (or whatever it's called) that are just the same than ISO left shift and <> keys ?

[ch_123]

Left shift on an ANSI keyboard uses the same scancode as the left shift on an AZERTY keyboard.

[British]

Uh sure, but that's not what I'm asking.

I was talking about ANSI's left shift that is covering two keys of ISO, and wondering if ANSI got two switches under that single shift, are they then using different scan codes.

But to boot, I think I kinda misunderstood quadibloc's comment on the matter.

[ch_123]

No. There is only the switch corresponding to the left shift on an ANSI board, the switch for the key to the right of left shift is not there.

On some keyboards - particularly the Model F and Model M, there is a unused contact where that key is, which in theory means that an ANSI version of one of these keyboards can be converted to ISO if a buckling spring assembly is inserted into the empty holder. Most other keyboard designs don't have any means of conversion - there is only a single switch under the left shift.

[quadibloc]

But to boot, I think I kinda misunderstood quadibloc's comment on the matter.

What I meant was that all the different ISO keyboards use the same scan codes for corresponding keys.

So an AZERTY ISO keyboard and a QWERTY ISO keyboard don't have different scan codes; the change from AZERTY to QWERTY doesn't happen at the keyboard level. That was what I had said.

An ANSI keyboard is missing the <> key. It doesn't add its scan code to that of the shift key which now covers the space where the <> key was, nor did I intend to imply such a thing.

The Group 1 and Group 2 scan codes of the |\ key on the ANSI keyboard are the same as those of the key to the immediate left of the lower half of the ENTER key on an ISO keyboard. (The Group 3 scan code, not normally used in Windows or DOS, is different, however.)

Except for those two differences, the <> key being missing, and the |\ key being essentially moved, the scan codes of an ANSI keyboard and an ISO keyboard are also identical.

[British]

That's not much, but at least I knew all ISO are created equal (so to speak) :smile:

I can't say the same about those stray keys, so thanks for the explanation.

I'll try make use of all this whenever I get my ANSI MX-11800 (within 2 weeks, most probably), and you can count on me coming here to whine if I fail in the process of making it ISO-friendly :wink:

[British]

Got the 11800, cleaned it (maybe not thoroughly, but that will do), took every key but the functions, modifiers, numpad... from my G80-3000, and now I'm a bit stuck, as expected...

I'm trying to remap the left ctrl+the |\ key to produce <, and the left alt+|\ to do >.
The |\ actually does *.
So I came up with:

Code: [Select]

<^*::<
<!*::>


Of course it doesn't work... any clue ?

[British]

No AHK guru hanging around ? :Cry:

[British]

Hmmm, looks like it was quite simple...

Code: [Select]

<^*::[COLOR=Red]Send [/COLOR]<
<!*::[COLOR=Red]Send [/COLOR]>

I'll try that tonight.