How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” in MS

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asar
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:23 am
Location: City: Kuantan, state: Pahang, country: Malaysia

How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” in MS

Post by asar »

Dear all. I have tried to assign my new letters using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, the main problem is I cannot assign them other than normal keys and shift keys? I cannot alter anything in the normal keyboard because I also use all the Latin characters. So the choice left to me is to make use other button such function, alt or control keys. But the keys are not working when it comes to practical aspect. Anybody could help me, please?
Asar Abd KarimTogether we make this temporary world a better place to live
vanisaac
Posts: 337
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Location: Washington State, USA

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by vanisaac »

There are actually two /possible/ issues in play here.

First, it is inadvisable to define ctrl+ keys to characters as many, many, many programs will preempt your character in favor of a menu command or macro. Quite possibly, this is happening.

Second, MSKLC does not define alt+ keys to characters, it defines altGr+ keys. This means that you must access these characters with the right Alt key, or Alt + Ctrl. You have to access these characters like you would using shift - there is no AltGr "caps lock", and likewise, the AltGr+Shift state can only be accessed by Capslock + AltGr if you tell it to do so.

Also, there are a few programs that might balk, but one of the easiest ways I have found of creating a keyboard for a simple second alphabet is to define the characters in the two SG Caps states in addition to the AltGr states. Load the Inuktitut-Naqittaut keyboard to check out a great example. All the characters accessible in the AltGr state are also accessible as a Capslock dead key combination, but underneath it all is pretty much a basic US keyboard layout in the bare and Shift states.

So back to your keyboard, you need to make a brand new keyboard for this to work, and since you want to base it on the standard US keyboard, the easy way is to simply File:load an existing keyboard and choose the US keyboard. From there, you should change the Project:properties so that they keyboard is accessible from a new language; that way, you don't have to select both a language AND a keyboard in order to get your new layout. Add all the characters you want to your AltGr and SG Caps states, then build your DLL and setup package. You then have to install the keyboard by running the setup.exe, and then select the given layout in your language toolbar, which will probably be found either as a floating toolbar, or on your taskbar, over by the clock.

Remember that SG Caps and deadkey combinations do not accept multi-code point characters, including those found outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, and letters plus combining diacritics.

-Van
Last edited by vanisaac on Tue Mar 22, 2011 7:03 pm, edited 2 times in total.
asar
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:23 am
Location: City: Kuantan, state: Pahang, country: Malaysia

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by asar »

Afternoon Vanisaac and thank you very much for the reply. I have to study what you wrote. Fyi, I am not a programmer and I quite dont understand these things:
1- "is to define the characters in the two SG Caps states": what do you mean by SG Caps states?
2- what the Inuktitut-Naqittaut keyboard is all about? I browsed in the Internet, I found (http://www.tavultesoft.com/kb/?id=41. 22/4/2011) a lot of new things for me at there and there are too many articles to be read. I am using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) and the one you propose to me is a different thing - I afraid it does not compatible with some Windows applications. Anyway, this need me to further my study about it. So could you tell me, based on your experience: which one is the better: MSKLC or this? fyi, I am using Windows XP and Windows 7 (2 laptops: my office laptop is XP and mine one is Windows7).
3- "Remember that SG Caps and deadkey combinations do not accept multi-code point characters, including those found outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, and letters plus combining diacritics." I dont quite clear about this... again SG Caps, I also dont understand about the deadkeys combinations, multi-code point characters, basic multilingual plane? anyway, "letters plus combining diacritics": do you mean dz with macron above them, is one of the letters?

Ok, very sorry my friend. I am quite slow: I spent about 1 year and 3 months (part-time base only since I have to focus on my work) to study about Font Creator and MSKLC. This new thing requires time.
Asar Abd KarimTogether we make this temporary world a better place to live
vanisaac
Posts: 337
Joined: Sun Mar 30, 2003 1:33 pm
Location: Washington State, USA

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by vanisaac »

asar wrote:Afternoon Vanisaac and thank you very much for the reply. I have to study what you wrote. Fyi, I am not a programmer and I quite dont understand these things:
1- "is to define the characters in the two SG Caps states": what do you mean by SG Caps states?
2- what the Inuktitut-Naqittaut keyboard is all about? I browsed in the Internet, I found (http://www.tavultesoft.com/kb/?id=41. 22/4/2011) a lot of new things for me at there and there are too many articles to be read. I am using Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) and the one you propose to me is a different thing - I afraid it does not compatible with some Windows applications. Anyway, this need me to further my study about it. So could you tell me, based on your experience: which one is the better: MSKLC or this? fyi, I am using Windows XP and Windows 7 (2 laptops: my office laptop is XP and mine one is Windows7).
3- "Remember that SG Caps and deadkey combinations do not accept multi-code point characters, including those found outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, and letters plus combining diacritics." I dont quite clear about this... again SG Caps, I also dont understand about the deadkeys combinations, multi-code point characters, basic multilingual plane? anyway, "letters plus combining diacritics": do you mean dz with macron above them, is one of the letters?

Ok, very sorry my friend. I am quite slow: I spent about 1 year and 3 months (part-time base only since I have to focus on my work) to study about Font Creator and MSKLC. This new thing requires time.
First off, EVERYTHING I wrote about in the last message is found in MSKLC. Don't look for it anywhere else, including on the internet, and especially not on Keyman.

SG Caps: Normally, when you press the Caps Lock key, it acts as if you are holding down the shift key. SG Caps - named for the Swiss German layout - allows you to define a whole other set of characters to the Caps Lock and Caps Lock + Shift keys.

I'm going to take you through this step by step here: 1) open MSKLC and load the Inuktitut-Naqittaut layout under File:Load an Existing Keyboard. 2) select the Show the Caps Lock checkbox in the upper left corner. You should see a whole set of Canadian Syllabics. (see the first picture, below) This is the SG Caps shift state, and it is completely different than when you press shift, which you can see by deselecting Caps Lock, and selecting the Shift checkbox - syllabics vs. capital letters, see? 3) reselecting Caps Lock, click on the close bracket key that is colored differently on the right side of the third row. Click on the "..." next to the Dead Key? checkbox that is filled in. This is the list of characters that will appear if you first press the bracket key, then any of the syllabic characters (pic 2) This is what is meant by a "dead key". It is dead because when you hit the bracket key, it doesn't immediately type a character, but waits to see if you are going to press one of the keys (the base) that makes a different character in combination (the composite). The great thing about this particular layout is that those dotted forms that are accessed by the bracket dead key are also defined as the AltGr shift state, so you can use either method (AltGr ignores the Caps Lock state), typing the same base key to get the dotted form of that character.

The Basic Multilingual Plane is the Unicode code points from U+0000..U+FFFF. This contains nearly every character used to write a currently spoken language, except for a few Chinese name characters. The Supplementary Multilingual Plane, code points U+10000..U+1FFFF, contains historical alphabets, special bold/italic/script/blackletter characters needed to correctly encode mathematical and scientific notation standards, notational conventions, and other rarely used scripts like Deseret, Egyptian Heiroglyphics, Cuneiform, Linear B, musical notation, Mah Jongg tiles, etc. The Secondary Ideographic Plane, U+20000..U+2FFFF, contains Chinese characters that are not used to write modern Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, or Japanese, and some names characters.

Only the characters found U+0000..U+FFFF can be accessed by dead key or in the SG Caps shift state. By multi-code point, I mean any character that cannot be expressed as a single Unicode code point. If you haven't already, download the Unicode 6.0 code charts (75 MB!) at http://www.unicode.org/Public/6.0.0/cha ... Charts.pdf , and you can see what constitutes a single code point. If you can't find your character in a single box, but have to compose it with two or more characters, like dz̄dz̄dz̄dz̄d͞z macron, then you cannot specify that as the composite (result) of a dead key, nor as a character in one of the SG Caps shift states.

A couple notes about navigating in MSKLC. First, you won't see the SG Caps state when you click on a key unless you select the advanced view. Same with the dead key options. This should get you started, but remember, you can always look at any of the crazy keyboards out there by going to File:Load and Existing Keyboard, and selecting your option. Chinese keyboards can't be made this way, so you won't see some of the really nutty stuff unless you start getting into the Table Text Service ( a word of advice, don't ever look into the Table Text Service. It's horrible. )

Lastly, I am not a programmer, either. I studied languages and the ancient world at university. We all have to learn this stuff on our own, and it just comes from curiosity and perseverance.

-Van
Attachments
SG Caps shift state
SG Caps shift state
Inuk.png (27.7 KiB) Viewed 12201 times
bracket (dot) dead key
bracket (dot) dead key
dead.png (23.55 KiB) Viewed 12201 times
asar
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:23 am
Location: City: Kuantan, state: Pahang, country: Malaysia

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by asar »

Afternoon Van and thank you for the information. I dont have the Inuktitut-Naqittaut keyboard layout - its not in my computer, it just has Inuktitut Latin. Just now, I tried to surf the related website: http://www.kbdedit.com/manual/file_regi ... _file.html, but dont find the keyboard? dont mind if you could forward to me the keyboard?
Last edited by asar on Wed Mar 23, 2011 11:19 am, edited 1 time in total.
Asar Abd KarimTogether we make this temporary world a better place to live
asar
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:23 am
Location: City: Kuantan, state: Pahang, country: Malaysia

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by asar »

Dear Van. Perhaps you should go to what I have written to Bhikkhu Pesala (How to make a macron to be at the top).
I also did attach all the letters that I want them to be in my keyboard, i.e. the macron letters and dot below letters. May be you have something to say in that. Its good to know that you are studying: German language I guess? Well Van, by the way I am a lecturer. Sincerely from Malaysia
Asar Abd KarimTogether we make this temporary world a better place to live
vanisaac
Posts: 337
Joined: Sun Mar 30, 2003 1:33 pm
Location: Washington State, USA

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by vanisaac »

I can't believe the Inuktitut-Naqittaut layout isn't in Windows 7. Have you tried it on that machine yet? Anyway, the Inuktitut-Latin layout will at least show you how SG Caps works. The US-international keyboard is a good introduction to dead keys. Just play around with these two, and you should start to see how those two features work. Remember that your multi-code point characters need to be in the base, shift, AltGr, or AltGr+shift state, not in SG Caps or by dead key; and you shouldn't map any characters to one of the Ctrl shift states unless you are a brand new Indian Rupee - ₹!
asar
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:23 am
Location: City: Kuantan, state: Pahang, country: Malaysia

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by asar »

I do not check it yet in my another laptop- Windows 7. I just checked it in my XP office laptop. Ok, I'll do it,ok Van, thanks.
Asar Abd KarimTogether we make this temporary world a better place to live
asar
Posts: 28
Joined: Thu Nov 04, 2010 1:23 am
Location: City: Kuantan, state: Pahang, country: Malaysia

Re: How to make use button "fn: function", “alt” or “ctrl” i

Post by asar »

Ok, Van, I solved my problem. I use the dead keys as what has been taught by Bhikkhu Pesala. Now I have to focus on the bold issue - my font does not bold when the text is printed. Ok Van, thanks a lot.
Asar Abd KarimTogether we make this temporary world a better place to live
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