Re: keycode program

["Robert Holmgren" holmgren@xxxxxxxx]

** Reply to message from "David B. Kronenfeld"  on Sun,
12 Jan 2003 21:27:02 -0800

Ah! Real information. Thanks.

> Closing NB and reopening it still left it with the
> routine running and un-exitable from. It did not freeze Windows, but I had
> to reboot in order to get back to a usable NBWin.

You thought you closed it, or you _did_ close it but there was a zombie thread
still running. That's what Task Manager (C-A-D) is for -- to kill an
individual app or process. Taskman didn't work?

> And the code values returned were too long.

How long is too long? If you hit key combos, you're gonna see longer scan
codes than just range 1-105 -- you're gonna see up to 8000 range. Try e.g.
Ctrl-Shift-J or something: I get 2596. If you want to know how this works --
it's diabolically clever -- read my 1998 message at:

http://xywrite.org/msg00714.htm

In brief, the formula for Scancode is:
 scancode=(256*2 to the power of b)+a
where
 a=unshifted scancode
 b=position of Shifting key in ;DEFINITIONS stanza (counting from the bottom to
the top, and beginning with zero; remember that 2^0 equals 1)

> It made NB impossible to exit from; hitting "esc" just returned
> the value for that key.

It's designed to, but then after 1 second it's supposed to EXit by itself. It
_does_, for me, under v6.1 -- indeed, looking at the code, there's absolutely
no alternative -- this is very plain stuff! Since the keycode of the Escape
key is returned independent of any programming that exists on the Escape key,
and that keycode is 1, it should EXit no matter what. The only thing I can
think is that you have an odd keyboard that reprograms Escape to another key --
or that you've modified your KBD file such that what you *think of* as your
Escape key has been moved to some other physical key. You need to hit the key
that your hardware recognizes as Escape, or key #1. If you can't DECODE Carl's
test routine (because no U2 installed), here it is a a freestanding file. Just
RUN it.

-----------------------------
Robert Holmgren
holmgren@xxxxxxxx
-----------------------------

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