keyboards File

The keyboards file contains keyboard definitions and translations.

Synonym(s)

Description

The keyboards file contains two types of items:

Alternative keyboard definitions, including British, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and USA for PC-type systems, for the TCL command set-kbrd.
Keyboard input translation items for the TCL command set-imap.

The format of the keyboard input translation for set-imap is:

Attribute one must contain the keyword IMAP, optionally followed by one or more modifiers, separated by spaces. Valid modifiers are:

esc-data	Sets esc-data. Used if any input sequence contains an escape.
esc-level	Sets esc-level. Used if no input sequence contains an escape.
xcs-on	Enables the extended character set (8-bit characters).
xcs-off	Disables the extended character set.
timeout value	Sets the default timeout to value, expressed in milliseconds. This value can be overridden on a per port basis by set-imap.

Each line defines a translation where the input sequence and the converted sequence are separated by a : (colon). If the converted string is null, then the input sequence corresponds to a key that is ignored.

"input sequence" : "converted sequence"

The following items are ignored:
Text after an * (asterisk), except when enclosed in quotes
Spaces, except when enclosed in quotes
Empty lines
Each element in the input sequence or the converted string is separated by commas.
Characters and strings are represented by c’abc...’ or c"abc...".
c’]’
c’]A’
Hexadecimal values and strings are represented by x’NN’ or x’NNNNNN...’, where each pair of hexadecimal digits are assembled into one byte.
x’ff’
x’27ff’
Decimal values are represented normally.
Control characters are specified by a ^ (caret) followed by the corresponding letter, in uppercase or lowercase.

Each keyboard item may have an alternate translation table as well. It is specified using the keyword #alternate in the item. All lines following define the alternate table instead of the primary table. Use the keywords ALT and ALT_ONE in the converted sequence to specify a key sequence to switch to the alternate table then use the same key sequence to switch back. The ALT_ONE keyword denotes that the alternate table should be used for the next set of keystrokes only.

NOTE

Some keyboards (for example, ATT605BCT) generate 8-bit characters. Use the xcs-on modifier.
The number of the translation sequences is limited. The number depends on the actual data, but, converting all specials keys on an IBM3151, most of them generating two-character sequences into a two-character output sequence, takes about one fourth of the capacity of the filter.

Example(s)

The following example illustrates the IBM 3151 keyboard input definition to use special keys in the Update Processor.