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Author Topic: NEDK - Not Enough Damn Keys (Apple Wireless Keyboard Extender)  (Read 6645 times)

doctorfrog

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NEDK - Not Enough Damn Keys (Apple Wireless Keyboard Extender)


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I love my Apple Wireless Keyboard. It's pretty great. What I don't like is that Apple has basically no interest in supporting it natively in Windows 7, and hasn't made the keyboard drivers available to the likes of myself.

This means that I don't have any of the functions offered by the Fn key. This means I've had to do without PgUp, PgDn, Delete, Home, End, PrintScrn, and the context menu.

Ideally, I'd like to get my hands on the Windows 7 64x keyboard driver that Apple should have included with the keyboard in the first place. For one thing, I'd have access to Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn by simply using Fn+Arrows.

Well, fine. I've dealt with it pretty well so far, using SharpKeys, I've reassigned a few of the buttons so that I can have a few of the above, and rearrange the Win, Alt, and Ctrl keys so they make sense to my muscle memory. But SharpKeys can only assign one button function per button, and I don't have the surplus of buttons needed to replicate them all.

So, here's what I'm after:

I want to turn the Caps Lock key into a toggler for key functions for the right shift key.

Tap the Caps Lock, and instead of toggling Caps (which I never use), it rotates between the following functions for the shift key: PgUp, PgDn, Delete, Home, End, PrintScrn. I can then tap the right shift key and use it for that function.

Further, I should be able to choose which of the keys appear in the rotation, and the order in which they rotate. This could be done in a gui or a config file, either is fine.

Finally, there should be a tray app with a status indicator as to the current key function, and an audio prompt every time the keys are toggled. Better yet, customizable sounds for each of the key functions, so I can have a voice say "Print Screen" when the PrntScrn key is activated.

This sounds like a job for AutoHotKey, can it accomplish this? Or, does someone have the Win 7 64-bit driver for the Apple Wireless Keyboard?

Note: A project called UAWKS with AHK came out that attempted to do this, but it doesn't work with the current gen of keyboards, and is essentially a dead project, largely because of the difficulty of accessing the Fn button. This is why I'm not asking for Fn button support, it's probably too hard. But if you're up to it... it'd be a much better solution.

pyrohacker

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Re: NEDK - Not Enough Damn Keys (Apple Wireless Keyboard Extender)
« Reply #1 on: August 17, 2010, 04:32 PM »
I'm 99% sure AutoHotkey could do this. 

...

After looking at the help file, I'm 100% sure AutoHotkey can do this.  And even though I'll probably get 1-upped by someone better (Skrommel, this means you), I'll give it a go.
Funny that programmers chose the phrase "Hello, World" while most of us are introverts.

doctorfrog

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Re: NEDK - Not Enough Damn Keys (Apple Wireless Keyboard Extender)
« Reply #2 on: August 19, 2010, 02:58 PM »
Cool, I'm grateful for your efforts.

pyrohacker

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Re: NEDK - Not Enough Damn Keys (Apple Wireless Keyboard Extender)
« Reply #3 on: October 30, 2010, 12:41 PM »
doctorfrog, I'm sorry I haven't been working on it.  As soon as school started, I really fell behind on most of my coding.  I should have let you know beforehand.

I intend to work on and finish it today, though.  It will have a config file for settings (for portability and ease of coding).

Update:
The first working version is now available.  Host Page

Funny that programmers chose the phrase "Hello, World" while most of us are introverts.
« Last Edit: October 30, 2010, 04:16 PM by pyrohacker »