Re: [hatari-devel] Insert button of Inputs dialog (emulation menu of hatariui)

[Eero Tamminen <oak@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On 13.1.2023 19.40, Yves Le Berre wrote:
> The Insert button of Inputs dialog (emulation menu of Hatari UI)
> does not insert correct string ST side.
>
> The dialog box correctly displays the PC string but
> when the insert button is pressed, the ST string is
> a mix between american and french ST keys (letters capitalized).

That's actually a pretty hard thing to solve.

Hatari UI does not know which language / keymap user has selected in 
TOS, so it uses remote API scancodes.

I think best way to solve that would be:

1. Creating (C-code) mappings from SDL key symbols to Atari scancodes 
for keys in all Atari keyboard layouts [2]

2. Hatari using those mappings to do SDL key symbol -> Atari scancode 
based on what keyboard layout TOS is using (based on TOS country code & 
VRAM settings, and which TOS version is in question) [1]

3. Hatari UI changing to using symbolic keys instead of scancodes

But 1) is a lot of work. And 2) assumes that user does not use some 
later functionality (MiNT keymaps, some ACC etc) to map keys further.


[1] That's needed any way for users to be able to input all TOS 
supported keys from their keyboards, in all TOS supported languages.

While scancode support gives 95-99% of that (depending on language), 
there are few keys that it cannot cover [3], and while symbolic key 
support could handle those, it's currently *very* incomplete, as 
currently there's *no* per-keymap support.

[2] There are a lot of Atari keyboard layouts, and they share surprising 
small number of key locations:
	https://tho-otto.de/keyboards/


	- Eero

[3] due to differences between Atari keyboard layout and USB standard 
SDL uses for the scancodes.