The Keyboard Mapper

TinyTERM includes several keyboard schemes, divided by emulation type. The UNIX/Linux emulations share their schemes. TN3270 and TN5250 emulations also have custom schemes that are not shared with other emulation types.

Any scheme may also be edited to suit specific needs for each user. In addition, more than one keyboard mapping may be set up, and keyboard mappings may be distributed to other PCs.




Select an Existing Keyboard Scheme

From the Edit menu select Settings, then the Keyboard tab. From the drop-down list, select the keyboard scheme to load. To have the selected scheme take effect, click the OK button. To leave the keyboard scheme as is, click the Cancel button.




Edit a Scheme

To edit an existing keyboard scheme, select it and click the Edit button. The Keyboard Editor dialog box comes up. From here the keyboard may be edited. Click the Save As button when done editing.

To replace an existing scheme, give it the same name it had before. To create a new scheme, enter a new name in the Save As dialog.




The Keyboard Editor

The keys in the keyboard edit window accept several actions:

  • Any key can be dragged and dropped on any other key. This changes the destination key to send the same value as the source key. The label on the destination key will change to the new value, and the font will be bold to show that the key has been changed.
  • Any key can be clicked on and the key name will appear in the Keyname list box for manual editing.
  • When the Alt, Shift or Ctrl key is clicked, the keyboard will redraw to display the keys modified by the selected key. Shift and Ctrl may be combined, but Alt is used alone.

Keys that do not display a value are generally not mappable, except for the space bar.

The Key Chart

Clicking the Chart Open button opens the TCS key chart. Characters from the chart can be dragged to keys in the keyboard editor. The target key will be set to the value of the character dragged and dropped. Each page of the TCS chart can be viewed by clicking the buttons labeled 1, 2, 3 and 4 on the right side of the chart.

The functions chart can be displayed by clicking the F Button. TinyTERM functions can be dragged from this chart to any available key.

Common Macro Values

The following values can be entered in the Value field when remapping a key.

Macro Keyboard Equivalent Definition
\E
<^[>
Esc Escape
\r
<^M>
Enter Carriage return
\n
<^J>
Ctrl-J Line feed
<^X> Ctrl-X Control character, A-Z
<#> (n/a) ASCII value, 1-127
\x## (n/a) Hex value, 00-FF

TN5250 emulation has two additional key values available. Each can be accessed by a number or function name:

Macro 5250 Keyboard Equivalent Definition
<1177>
<LASTFIELDPOSITION>
LAST Move cursor to last position of current field
<1178>
<AIDPRINT>
PRINT Send current screen to printer

Set Button

This button can be used to apply the contents of the Value Viewer text box to the selected key.

The Reset Button

Clicking this button resets the selected key to its default value.

The Clipboard

The Clipboard is a temporary holding area for keys and values. If you need to map the same function to several keys, with only minor changes to each one, the Clipboard will speed up the process so you don’t have to type the same thing repeatedly. Once you’ve mapped the first key, use the mouse to drag it to the Clipboard. This copies the entire key to the clipboard.

You can then drag from the Clipboard to any number of keys, making them all the same. Once that’s done, click on each of the keys you remapped to change them individually.




Mapping Ctrl Keys in UNIX Emulations

TN3270 and TN5250 emulations allow you to map the left and right Ctrl keys through drag and drop. All other emulations can use mappings for the Ctrl keys, but not through the graphical keyboard mapper. Instead, they must be mapped by editing the keyboard.dat file.

This file can be opened in any text editor. Once the file is open, locate the keyboard scheme to be edited. Add a line in that scheme, using <LTCTRL> or <RTCTRL> as the key name, followed by the = equal sign, then the mapping string.

For example, to map the left Ctrl key to the string "passcode" followed by a carriage return, the entry in keyboard.dat would look like this:

<LTCTRL>=passcode<^M>

Any available key may be mapped by editing keyboard.dat manually. But this is the only way to map the Ctrl keys for UNIX and Linux emulations.




Copy Keyboard Schemes to Other PCs

Once you are done creating or modifying a keyboard scheme, it is saved into the file keyboard.dat, located in the user's My Documents\TinyTERM folder. To share the mappings with other users or desktop PCs, copy keyboard.dat to the same location for the other user. This will work both for different users on the same PC, and for multiple PCs.

This information is also available in a screencast.

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