Useful hints
Programming keyboards by tables allows a very flexible keyboard layout.
However, one should have some thought about the task of a technician in
the field. From logistics point of view it has to be ensured that:
Spare keyboards are delivered always loaded with customer specific tables
with starting the system the tables are loaded automatically.
The batch utilities
n
SENDKBT.EXE
n
RCVKBT.EXE
n
KB2DEF.EXE
n
KBCHKDEF.EXE
are provided especially for this situation to allow support of the technicians.
However, the programs alone are not helpful for a technician. Instead they
should be available dependent on the solution on disks together with rsp.
tables at the site. Also they should be executable with the resources
available there.
Take care, that there must not be any keyboard activity when they are
executed. This has to be strongly observed, if such a utility is run
automatically at start of the system! This at least requires proper error
handling rsp. retries in the execution of batchfiles.
Double, Triple, and Quad keys only have a cylindric part responsible for
generating the respective code. So it is useful to assign the code to all
possible positions covered by a key.
Anyway observe the rules given in the chapter “Inserting Key Cabs”.
22
FILES FOR PROGRAMMING