Will Win7 accept Win2000's keyboard drivers?

[BucklingSpring]

The short story is in the subject.

I learned to type in French in the 80's when to do a >è< you had to hit >'< first, then >e<
same for >à<. But é was assigned to a single key >/<.

This French driver was carried over until Windows 2000. MS changed it in XP while keeping the same driver filename. Since XP >à<, >è< and few others are assigned to a single key.

I was able to overwrite XP's by 2000's and get the legacy layout to work properly.

My new work laptop will come with Windows 7 and I was wondering if I'm going to be able to import the same old keyboard drivers in it.

I'm no AutoHotkey programmer but I guess I'll have to learn how to convert a sequence of keys to produce a single one. Ie creating a "longcut".

Otherwise do you know a Windows 7 application able to make custom Keyboard drivers?

Thanks.

[IanS]

Do you know about the US-international keyboard layout? It sounds similar to what you're used to:

Code: [Select]

Press this key Then press this key Resulting character
'(APOSTROPHE) c, e, y, u, i, o, a ç, é, ý, ú, í, ó, á
`(ACCENT GRAVE) e, u, i, o, a è, ù, ì, ò, à
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560

[BucklingSpring]

Do you know about the US-international keyboard layout? It sounds similar to what you're used to:

Code: [Select]

Press this key Then press this key Resulting character
'(APOSTROPHE) c, e, y, u, i, o, a ç, é, ý, ú, í, ó, á
`(ACCENT GRAVE) e, u, i, o, a è, ù, ì, ò, à
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/306560

Thank you, that's the spirit... But not what I'm looking for.

eg I need '(APOSTROPHE) e, resulting in è not é
and for that matter }c, resulting in ç
 
And since I type mostly in English, I don't use the French AZERTY layout. I type of standard US keyboards. It's also easyier for me because I have small hands and the wide LEFT-SHIFT is very good for me. The French AZERTY has a key between the LEFT-SHIFT and the Z which is very anoying.

Back to my question. Do Win7 (32bit) will accept a Win2000 legacy keyboard dll?
This quick and dirty work around worked for me like a charm.

I might as well go with the flow and relearn how to type differently.

[Culinia]

Hi there. Have you tried the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator?

I would imagine you could just load up the US International layout and just replace it with the chars you said...

File - load exiting keyboard - US International - right-click on the apostrophe key - 'properties for vk_oem_7 in all shift states... then click advanced view then click on the ... thing on the right.

This will take you here which I think you want

[The Solutor]

Look here, i had a similar problem.

My keymap uses `, then e to get è and alt graph+e to get é.

http://geekhack.org/showwiki.php?title=The+Solutors+UK+like+ANSI+Keymap+easy+diacritical+with+the+ANSI+keyboards

[BucklingSpring]

@Culinia - Thanks that might be the way... Will it be compatible with the ALT-SHIFT shortcut to switch between keyboard layouts ie US<->French for that matter?
@The Solutor - Thanks as well, was this for Windows 7?

I'll get my Win7 Laptop Monday and will start experimenting with those options.

[The Solutor]

It works for sure on win 7, win vista, win xp, x86, x64 or ia64, likely also win 2k is supported.

[False_Dmitry_II]

I'd say to go ahead and try your old solution first. Then if it doesn't work, do the other stuff. Make a backup of the win7 original files.