sq.h changes, grabbed reserved field in sqKeyboardEvent

[Andreas Raab]

Hi John -

> So why can't you use ToUnicode() to translate the virtual key code or 
> the scan key code into the unicode character?

I wish it were that simple but it wouldn't work - not for the problem 
statement that Mike posted (that's why I was asking for it).

The problem statement itself (which is perfectly valid from a user 
perspective) is actually remarkably ill-defined from a system 
perspective: It asks the key mapper to take three keys as input 
(Ctrl-Shift-1) and generate 2 keys output (Ctrl-! or somesuch). The 
reason this is ill-defined is that that's not how key mappers work (at 
least the one's I know about) - all they care about is the combination 
of all keys. Which means that ToUnicode will happily respond to 
Ctrl-Shift-1 saying "oh, sorry, there is no Unicode character for that 
combination".

And, IIRC (but I need to verify this) ToUnicode is the precise manual 
equivalent of what Windows does anyway when it translates WM_KEYDOWN 
into WM_CHAR. Which means that all you need is to look at what 
characters get generated already to find out how ToUnicode would 
respond. Which in the case of our Ctrl-Shift-1 example is not at all (I 
tested this with various keyboard layouts which supports the theory).

So for the plain Unicode mapping I can use ToUnicode() - in fact I am 
using it already (via WM_KEYDOWN -> WM_CHAR translation) and report it 
in the utf32 field for the key stroke event. But I *can't* use 
ToUnicode() to solve the problem we were discussing - to map the input 
while making arbitrary distinctions between Ctrl and Shift in the 
Windows key mapper (not unless we start masking out ctrl state which 
immediately leads to other issues - that is exactly what I mean by "it's 
a pain").

If you want such a distinction (and that's why the problem statement is 
so important) you need to do it manually to begin with. And I'd rather 
have that code in the image.

BTW, just out of interest: Does the Mac make a distinction between 
certain modifiers when it maps keyboard input? I'd be quite surprised if 
you'd get "Ctrl-!" out of mapping Ctrl-Shift-1 as input (but what do I 
know ;-)

 > Sure I can return 42 the magic number from LMGetKbdType() meaning you
 > are using as Estonia keyboard, or maybe
 > 78 for Devanagari keyboard in the Indian Language Kit, however it's
 > unlikely I or any other developer will want to code the
 > keyboard to ascii/macroman/unicode whatever translation tables in the
 > image.

That's one good thing about Open Source: It only takes one programmer to 
fix that problem and if he's out there the Internet can find him.

Cheers,
   - Andreas