Re: [AD] new_api_branch news

[Daniel Schlyder <daniel@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Peter Wang:
> Elias Pschernig wrote:

>>Especially on windows I'd like to see a more sane behavior.
>>Using pckeys.c and keyboard.dat, we will never be able to support proper
>>internationalization. Which is a shame, given how early Allegro cared
>>about just that, even supporting unicode so early. Right now, you can
>>use Allegro's keyboard proplerly maybe in 3 or 4 countries. And I see no
>>reason at all why not to follow the way of the OSX or linux console (or
>>your new X11 driver I guess).
>>  
>>
> Unfortunately there is no way to do it using DirectInput.  DirectInput 
> just treats the keyboard like a giant gamepad.  You're supposed to use 
> the usual Windows message system if you want typing input.  I don't know 
> if using both DirectInput and Windows messages at the same time is feasible.

I don't know how to do it, but I think SDL doesn't have a keyboard.dat
equivalent, so it must be feasible.

> An incomplete solution (that still leaves out complex input systems) is 
> to supply bunch of keyboard layouts (as we already do) but automatically 
> pick the right one.  The user should not have to edit config files.

I'm doing this in my current project using the language ID part of the
GetKeyboardLayout() return value. I guess this is what you're talking about.
Seems to work ok, but the real problem is, of course, the variable quality
of the layout files. For example, the Norwegian layout supports the special
Norwegian letters, but not the Swedish or most other ASCII-8 characters,
although I can type these on my Norwegian keyboard.

--
Daniel Schlyder
http://bitblaze.com/