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1992-08-20
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Digital Keyclick
Copyright (C) 1991, 1992
By David Baggett
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
User Contract
This program is SHAREWARE. You may distribute it at will, provided you
1) do not charge any money for it,
2) distribute it WITH the documentation, and
3) do not change the program or documentation in ANY WAY.
The idea here is that you get to TRY before you BUY. So try, then BUY.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
------------
Are you completely sick of the cheesy ST keyclick? Do you envy those
Mac users who can make their keyboards sound like 1929 manual typewriters?
Well, wait no longer! This program will let you install a different
digital sound for every key on the keyboard! Are we having fun yet?!
Digital Keyclick now supports the STe's (and TT's, and Falcon's) DMA
sound capabilities. So you can even have stereo keyclicks -- how
gratuitous can you get?
General Usage
-------------
Put click.prg in your AUTO folder. Then create a file called click.inf
with a standard ASCII text editor and put it in the root directory of
your boot partition (e.g., if your AUTO folder is C:\AUTO\, put click.inf
in C:\).
In click.inf you specify which sounds will be mapped to which keys. Each
entry in click.inf consists of a sound file name, a playback speed
(in Hertz), and a list of the keys that will produce that sound. Here's
an example click.inf:
{stedma}
[d:\usr\sounds\vowel.snd] {stereo} 8000 a e i o u
[d:\usr\sounds\cons.snd] {stereo} 8000 b c d f g h j k l m n
p q r s t v w x y z
[d:\usr\sounds\return.snd] 11000 return
Filenames MUST be enclosed in square brackets. Some white space (spaces,
tabs, newlines) must separate each field, but the amount of white space
is unimportant. Key names (the letters "a e i o ..." and "b c d ..." above)
must be separated by some white space as well. In other words,
[d:\usr\sounds\vowel.snd] 8000 aeiou
is incorrect.
Any printable character is a valid key name. For example,
[d:\usr\sounds\special.snd] 8000 ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( )
[d:\usr\sounds\boing.snd] 11000 ~
is perfectly acceptable.
If a file name appears twice, the file will be loaded and stored in
memory twice, so always list each file only once. Instead of writing
[d:\usr\sounds\my.snd] 8000 a e i o u
[d:\usr\sounds\my.snd] 8000 y
[d:\usr\sounds\my.snd] 8000 return
write
[d:\usr\sounds\my.snd] 8000 a e i o u
y
return
or
[d:\usr\sounds\my.snd] 8000 a e i o u y return
Remember that once you've installed Digital Keyclick, the sound samples
remain resident in memory until you reboot.
Other Key Names
---------------
You may have noticed "return" as a key name in the example above.
Key names are provided for other unprintable characters as well:
backspace clrhome delete esc
help insert return space (or spacebar)
tab undo
are all valid key names and can be used just like printable characters.
Wildcards
---------
Several wildcards are provided for mapping large groups of keys. These
can also be used like printable characters. They include
all arrows funkeys letters
lower numbers upper
where "arrows" refers to the four cursor keys, "funkeys" refers to function
keys F1 through F10, "letters" refers to upper and lower case letters A
through Z, "lower" refers to lower case letters a through z, "numbers" refers
to the numbers 0 through 9 (on the keypad as well), and "upper" refers to
upper case letters A through Z. "all" maps all keys on the keyboard.
It is important to realize that keys are mapped in the order the names
appear, so you generally want to put wildcards first. For example,
[d:\usr\sounds\nifty.snd] 11000 numbers
[d:\usr\sounds\boring.snd] 11000 all
will cause all keys, including the number keys, to get mapped to the
second sound, since the "all" wildcard will override the effect of the
"numbers" entry.
ASCII and Scan Codes
--------------------
Each key on the keyboard generates an ASCII code and a scan code
when pressed. For example, the C key generates the ASCII value 67 and
a scan code of 46. ASCII values are the same on all machines (so the
C key generates an ASCII code of 67 on a Mac, Amiga, Sun 3/60, etc.) but
scan codes are specific to the Atari ST keyboard. Special keys, for
example function keys, generate an ASCII code of zero. This means that you
can only refer to these keys in terms of scan codes.
Digital Keyclick lets you name a key on the keyboard by either ASCII
or scan code. To name a key by ASCII code, use the decimal ASCII value
follwed by an "A" (with no white space intervening):
[d:\usr\sounds\controlc.snd] 11000 3A
refers to the Control-C combination, which has ASCII code 3.
Naming keys by scan code is similar -- just use "S" instead of "A":
[d:\usr\sounds\alt_q.snd] 11000 16Q
refers to the Alt-Q combination, which has ASCII code zero, scan code 16.
Note that only special keys that generate ASCII codes of 0 can be
named this way. If a key generates a nonzero ASCII value, that value will
be used instead of the scan code. So it's not possible to distinguish,
for example, between the Return key and the Enter key (on the keypad), since
both of these keys generate an ASCII code of 13.
The wildcard "scan" refers to all keys that generate an ASCII code of
zero. Similarly, the wildcard "ascii" refers to all keys that generate
a nonzero ASCII code.
A table of ASCII and scan codes is included at the end of this
document.
Making Keys Silent
------------------
You may want to "unmap" a key previously named with a wildcard to make
it silent. To do this, use two square brackets with no white space between
them as the filename, and omit the playback speed. Writing
[d:\usr\sounds\loud.snd] 11000 all
[] 7A esc
will prevent Digitial Keyclick from playing a sound when either Control-G
or Esc are pressed.
Enabling and Disabling Digital Keyclick
---------------------------------------
When click.prg is invoked with no parameters, it reads the click.inf
file and loads all the sounds. This typically occurs at bootup in the
AUTO folder. However, you can run click.prg from a command shell (or
from the desktop if you rename a copy click.ttp) as well. To turn
Digital Keyclick off, type
click off
from a command shell, or run click.ttp from the desktop with parameter
"off".
Similary, type
click on
to turn Digital Keyclick back on.
Specifying an Alternate D/A Device
----------------------------------
Digital Keyclick can be configured to play its samples through
other D/A devices. Currently, the Hippo/Navarone and ST Replay digitizers
are supported. The STe's (and TT's, and Falcon's) 8-bit D/A is also
supported, with either the DMA or the MFP for timing. (If you use the
DMA for timing, you can only play at certain sample rates, so sounds may
sound too fast or slow. On the other hand, if you use the MFP for timing
you can play stereo samples at any rate but the sound quality isn't quite
as good.)
Other digitizers will be supported if people send me info on them.
To use an alternate D/A device, put one of the following keywords
in curly brackets somewhere in your click.inf file: