Some keyboarding terms

by Michael S. Kaplan, published on 2004/11/27 03:08 -05:00, original URI: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/michkap/archive/2004/11/27/270931.aspx


This posting will try to clear up some of the problems in documentation and info regading keyboards, since there is plenty left in those things to be confusing and there is no need to throw bewildering terms into the mix. Future posts will build on this one, so if you already know about keyboards you might be able to skip it (though I would not advise it!). It is not really a glossary since it is not alphabetized; the order is arbitrary based on either when I thought of a term to add or when I thought dramatic effect could be increased.

That's all I can think of at the moment, but I am sure I will be updating this topic any time I think of something else.


# Norman Diamond on 21 Dec 2004 6:21 PM:

If Layout ID and KLID are two separate identifiers, how come Windows still suffers from the forcing a single value to misrepresent both the keyboard layout and IME together? This is the root cause of some of the problems I've mentioned in feedback to some of your later postings. The physical keyboard has a physical layout of what is shown on its keys, and the IME is a separate layer on top of that. Why can't users (of either a real IME or "Global" IME) independently say what their real keyboard layout is and say what IME they wish to use on top of it?

# Michael Kaplan on 21 Dec 2004 10:18 PM:

Your issue has nothing to do these two things being separate. I'll work at trying to help with the other issues you bring up in a different post though as this one is unrelated.

# Norman Diamond on 21 Dec 2004 11:13 PM:

Well, I used to think that Microsoft had one single identifier into which they forced the combination of real keyboard layout and IME, resulting in the described problems. I used to think that those problems could be avoided by using two separate identifiers. Then in your posting I learned that there ARE two separate identifiers. So why didn't one identifier get one of these meanings and the other identifier get the other meaning? Why did both of them still get the combination of the same two meanings squashed together?

I understand that you will bring this up in another post, I thank you and I look forward to it. But meanwhile it still looks to me like my question was on-topic.

# Michael Kaplan on 21 Dec 2004 11:40 PM:

They are different meanings, and the meaning relate to important tracking issues within the USER subsystem and the architecture of keyboards.

Your interest in adding yet a third meaning is a separate issue. So the reason that that meaning was not captured here is that they were busy with the other stuff? :-)

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referenced by

2008/09/29 What a tangled web we weave when a KLID from an HKL we must receive

2007/11/29 The UK Extended keyboard -- over-extended? Or weirdly extended?

2007/08/23 Getting the language (and more!) of an LCID-less keyboard

2007/02/07 I do not think that word means what the Platform SDK thinks it means

2005/12/01 What is the VK for the semicolon?

2005/09/09 internationalizaton vs. localizability

2005/04/17 Why are the HKL and KLID of the keyboard different?

2005/04/08 The ever-misleadingly incorrect usage of the word DEFAULT

2004/12/05 How do I get the @!#$% name of the keyboard?

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