Keyboard Definition Files

WinaXe Plus has 35 keyboard definition files allowing you to use one of the 35 international PC keyboards. Each of them corresponds to the country your keyboard was designed for. These files are listed in Appendix A.

Your Keyboard Definition file has the .KMF extension. It resides in the WinaXe Plus's configuration files directory (in the location you specified when installing WinaXe Plus).

The basic purpose of a keyboard file is to assign PC keys to generate specific keysyms. A keysym is a key code that corresponds to a specific symbol supported by the X protocol.

A Keyboard Definition file is an ASCII source file that defines what key sequence is sent to a client when you press a given key on your PC's keyboard (i.e. keyboard mapping).

You can customize a keyboard by one of two ways:

• By modifying a selected (on installation) keyboard file
  
  
• By choosing the userkbd.kmf keyboard file and then editing it.

These are some of the things you can do:

• Make any key on your keyboard send any supported X keysym to the host
  
  
• Make use of extra keys on non-standard keyboards to send special keysyms to the host or to a client.

You can view and modify Keyboard Definition Files by using the Telnet_SSH' Keyboard Mapping option. (See section The Keyboard Mapping Option in Chapter Telnet_SSH).

The Keyboard Mapping File format is described in Appendix A.

All keyboard files are written for keyboards with a separate cursor keypad. Note that there are two U.K. keyboard files supplied. One is for a 101-key U.K. keyboard, and other is for a 102-key keyboard. The 101-key U.K. keyboard is identical to the U.S. keyboard except that holding Shift and pressing 3 produces a POUND sign instead of a '#' sign.

To input the Euro currency sign, the recommended Alt_R+E combination was inserted into the following KMF-files:

us15.kmf, danish.kmf, belgian.kmf, decemfrc.kmf, decemfr.kmf, decemgr.kmf, decemuk.kmf, dutch.kmf, frencan.kmf, french.kmf, german.kmf, hungarn.kmf, italian.kmf, latinam.kmf, norwegia.kmf, portugue.kmf, slovenia.kmf, spanish.kmf, swedfinn.kmf, swedish.kmf, swissfre.kmf, swissger.kmf, uk102.kmf, and uk102m.kmf.

The msus.kmf, uk101.kmf, decemus.kmf, userkbd.kmf, us.kmf, dvorak.kmf, and jpn106.kmf files do not provide for the Alt_R+E input.

The us15.kmf file is a copy of the us.kmf file with the Alt_R key description changed from XK_Alt_R to XK_Mode_switch.

In many European languages (e.g., France, Germany), users need to enter some special characters by combining a Diacritic (or composer) character and a normal letter. KMF files allow for this feature for national keyboards.

Note: if you need to send the four MS Windows specific key combinations to X clients, you have to enter the substitution strings into the [XSETUP] section of the xwp.ini file (for package's communication programs can use them).

For example: