2006-07-16

Custom keymaps in windows

The more I reflected on it, the more I wanted a ☠ skull key (olde-hat Dungeon Master ex-addict that I am), and while that would have been a breeze under any self respecting unix system, with tools like xmodmap and xkeycaps, I couldn't for the world figure out how to do it under Windows XP. Lots of painstakingly googling around later, I found some pages on how to hack the registry to remap the keyboard (for stuff already in the keymap, but in all the wrong places), then a working freeware KeyTweak and an even neater remapkey.exe in the Windows Server 2003 Reskit Tools, and finally something like the xkeycaps I was looking for, in MSKLC: the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator.

If I can only figure out how to avoid getting the "There was a problem building the keyboard file. Would you like to see warning/error information?" prompt and instead get the "The Windows Installer package was built successfully in..." message, things would be extra tremendous. Answering "Yes" at the aforementioned prompt, by the way, yields a "There was no warnings or errors." dialog. [OK]. I suppose I'll have to try it on another computer, reinstall windows or something. Business as usual.
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3 comments:

  1. JonathanSun Jul 16, 10:00:00 AM PDT

    Hi Johan--How about AutoHotKey, which does keyboard remapping (and a ton of other useful macro stuff). I use it to map caps to ctrl.

    As for getting rid of the dialog, I recommend the Push That Freakin Button utility.

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  2. Johan SundströmSun Jul 16, 01:42:00 PM PDT

    Thanks! It seems useful for macros and basic remapping, though not adding new unicode code points to the mix. (At least I didn't figure out how to have it understand reading its own config files in a unicode capable encoding.)

    But I think I'll manage to get the MSKLC method working, once I try the tool on a few other Windows machines; I'll bet it's just some failure condition present in my local configuration which triggers the unhandled error case.

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  3. BlaarpWed Nov 15, 04:37:00 AM PST

    Dude, like .. Read the error log.
    Does wonders. ;)

    I've been using MSKLC myself for a while (still couldn't do what i wanted it to, but hey, happens) and the errors are always explained in the error log ;)

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