MBilderbeek
commented
2 years ago For the above first 2 bullets, we need to define which keys are available for a certain MSX machine and to which keyboard matrix position they correspond. It must be easy to recognize them and they must be referable from a (new kind of) bind command, to assign toggling events to presses of such keys.
Note that the same information could also be used for other things, like:
- the use case of the OSD keyboard. That scripts hardcodes the keyboard matrix independent of the used machine and is thus not working (properly) for machines without international keymatrix layout (try for instance a Japanese machine, or the Philips VG 8010, or a German MSX like the Sony HB-F700D). Note that the proposed information is still not enough to make the OSD keyboard perfect, as it doesn't cover the physical positions of the keys in the keyboard.
- replacing the keyboard matrix entries in the unicodemap files with actual key names, which makes it much easier to understand. (The matrix positions would then have to be looked up from this new file). It would also allow us to remove the DEADKEY stuff from the unicodemap file, as it would be redundant. And we could remove the hardcoded positions of modifier keys from the openMSX C++ code.
To make this information available, we could for instance let each machine configuration file to refer to a file that contains this information.
For instance, for a Philips NMS 8250 it could look as follows, where the first column contains the
00, 0, ZERO
01, 1, ONE
02, 2, TWO
03, 3, THREE
04, 4, FOUR
05, 5, FIVE
06, 6, SIX
07, 7, SEVEN
10, 8, EIGHT
11, 9, NINE
12, -, MINUS
13, =, EQUALS
14, \, BACKSLASH
15, [, LEFT SQUARE BRACKET
16, ], RIGHT SQUARE BRACKET
17, ;, SEMICOLON
20, ,, APOSTROPHE
21, `, GRAVE ACCENT
22, ,, COMMA
23, ., FULL STOP
24, /, SLASH
25, DEAD, `'^" ACCENTS
26, A
27, B
30, C
31, D
32, E
33, F
34, G
35, H
36, I
37, J
40, K
41, L
42, M
43, N
44, O
45, P
46, Q
47, R
50, S
51, T
52, U
53, V
54, W
55, X
56, Y
57, Z
60, SHIFT
61, CTRL
62, GRAPH
63, CAPS
64, CODE
65, F1
66, F2
67, F3
70, F4
71, F5
72, ESC
73, TAB
74, BS
75, SELECT
76, RETURN
80, SPACE
81, HOME
82, INS
83, DEL
84, ←, LEFT
85, ↑, UP
86, ↓, DOWN
87, →, RIGHT
90, NUM*, NUMPAD ASTERISK
91, NUM+, NUMPAD PLUS
92, NUM/, NUMPAD SLASH
93, NUM0, NUMPAD ZERO
94, NUM1, NUMPAD ONE
95, NUM2, NUMPAD TWO
96, NUM3, NUMPAD THREE
97, NUM4, NUMPAD FOUR
a0, NUM5, NUMPAD FIVE
a1, NUM6, NUMPAD SIX
a2, NUM7, NUMPAD SEVEN
a3, NUM8, NUMPAD EIGHT
a4, NUM9, NUMPAD NINE
a5, NUM-, NUMPAD MINUS
a6, NUM,, NUMPAD COMMA
a7, NUM., NUMPAD FULL STOPCertain keys are very important, but do not have constant names across MSX machines. E.g. the CODE key can also be named РУС on Russian MSX machines, or かな (KANA) on Japanese MSX machines. So perhaps we need an extra column for this, what do you think? (The openMSX C++ code should have a way to know which is the CODE/KANA key for the current machine.)
I also realize that these arrows are nice to show in a menu or so, but they are hard to type on a keyboard in a command... So, perhaps the 2nd column must be a name that is easy to type and fixed, the 3rd column the main symbol on the machine's keyboard and the 4th an optional short textual description (e.g. to be used as a tool tip in a GUI)? Please share your thoughts, especially @m9710797 and @mthuurne which whom I have discussed this before outside GitHub :)
m9710797
See for instance this: https://www.msx.org/forum/msx-talk/openmsx/need-a-little-help-binding-joystick-buttons
It's quite a mess/trouble to map host PC input (e.g. from a controller) to an MSX keyboard key. This is very useful for cases like Metal Gear or other games where you need keyboard keys to get into menus (like F1, F2) or want to press the STOP key or another key to pause. It requires a lot of complex bindings and knowledge of the used keyboard matrix.
Ideally, as a user, you would want to say something like: "map joy0 button2 to MSX F2 key". I would even like to make an OSD menu entry to configure this stuff. But for that, we need some ingredients:
keyboard_typetag in the machine XML config file. This tag is currently used to find the proper unicodemap file, which maps unicode characters to keypresses, but has no information about the key.Note that I'm putting only host controller events as input into scope here. But the scope could be widened by also allowing to map easily host keyboard events to MSX keyboard keys. In that case, it would also be necessary to be able to query all host keyboard keys to generate a selection menu for these.
How can we get further with this, folks? Please help.
This is just not going to help enough:
;-)