Keyboard emulation
==================
E-UAE emulates an Amiga keyboard layout by a straightforward mapping - where
possible - of host keys to Amiga keys. In general, the alphanumeric keys,
function keys, numbers, punctuation, cursor keys, numeric keypad, etc.
should work as expected (that is, the symbol on the key cap should be
produced in AmigaOS when the key is pressed). There are some difficulties,
however, particularly with international keyboard layouts, and we shall discuss
these in a moment.
In addition, the following keys are mapped to the Amiga keys and Help key:
Left Super Left Amiga
Right Super Right Amiga
PageDown Left Amiga
PageUp Right Amiga
Menu key Right Amiga
Insert Help
The "Super" keys are the Windows keys on a PC keyboard, Command keys on a Mac
keyboard, Amiga keys on an Amiga keyboard, etc. Note that most Mac keyboards
don't differentiate between left and right Option keys, and both will
produce a Left Amiga.
Currently, E-UAE's keyboard mapping is not user-configurable. This will be
addressed in a future release.
International keyboards
=======================
If you are using E-UAE built with the X11 or SDL graphics drivers then you
may set the kbd_lang= option to specify your keyboard layout (you also need
to pick an appropriate keyboard driver in AmigaOS).
Supported layouts currently include:
de - German
dk - Danish
es - Spanish
us - USA (default)
se - Swedish
fr - French
it - Italian
Pick the layout that best fits your keyboard (e.g. use 'us' for British
keyboards).
Support for some layouts is currently poor - for example, numeric and
punctuation keys are interchanged on the French layout - and SDL poorly
supports international keys.
A partial solution is to use E-UAE's raw key mapping (see below).
Command key sequences
=====================
The following key combinations invoke UAE commands or functions:
F12 + Q Quit UAE
F12 + R Reset UAE (warm reset)
F12 + Left Shift + R Reset UAE (cold reset)
F12 + D Open built-in debugger/monitor
F12 + S Toggle between windowed display and full-screen mode
(if supported by the graphics driver).
F12 + G Toggle mouse-grab mode (in windowed mode)
F12 + I (or Toggle display inhibit (Amiga screenmodes, not P96)
Scroll Lock)
F12 + A Cycle through audio interpolation modes
(interpolation works with 16-bit audio only)
F12 + Numpad Plus Increase frame-skip rate
F12 + Numpad Minus Decrease frame-skip rate
F12 + F1 Open dialog to insert floppy image in drive 0
F12 + F2 Open dialog to insert floppy image in drive 1
F12 + F3 Open dialog to insert floppy image in drive 2
F12 + F4 Open dialog to insert floppy image in drive 3
F12 + Left Shift + F1 Eject floppy image in drive 0
F12 + Left Shift + F2 Eject floppy image in drive 1
F12 + Left Shift + F3 Eject floppy image in drive 2
F12 + Left Shift + F4 Eject floppy image in drive 3
F12 + F5 Open dialog to load emulator state file.
F12 + Left Shift + F5 Open dialog to save emulator state file.
F12 + Nampad 0 Quick save emulator state.
F12 + Right Shift + Numpad 0 Quick load emulator state.
F12 + Numpad 1 Quick save emulator state to slot 1.
F12 + Right Shift + Numpad 1 Quick load emulator state from slot 1.
F12 + Numpad 'n' Quick save emulator state to slot 'n'.
F12 + Right Shift + Numpad 'n' Quick load emulator state from slot 'n'.
F12 + F Emulates freeze button of Action Replay cartridge
(if you have a cartridge ROM loaded).
On Mac OS X, use F11 rather than F12 in the key sequences above (reason: F12
is used by Finder on OS X to eject a CD. On OS 10.3, I believe F11 may be
used by Expose, so you may need to change your Expose settings.) On AmigaOS,
use CTRL+Left Alt instead of F12 (reason: most Amigas don't have F12 keys).
Raw key-mapping
===============
When emulating an Amiga keyboard in UAE, the tricky thing is how to translate
key-presses on the host to virtual key-presses on the emulated Amiga.
Traditionally, when running UAE on Unix systems using X or SDL, UAE maps
host key symbols (cooked keys, the translated symbols produced according to
your operating system's keymap settings) to raw Amiga key-presses. This
approach has a number of problems, especially with international keyboards.
This is mainly due to the number of translations involved in this process
and the fact that it requires that apples be converted into oranges, back
into apples and then into oranges again for a key-press on the host keyboard
to eventually end up on your virtual Amiga screen.
When mapping cooked keys, what happens is this. You press a key. Ignoring
the really low-level stuff, your host operating system produces a raw
key code denoting which key on the keyboard is pressed (this keycode
identifies the position of the key on the keyboard, not the symbol that is
painted on the key cap). Your OS then translates this to a key symbol using
your keymap settings to produce (if your keymap is correct) a value which
actually does correspond to the symbol painted on the physical key on your
keyboard.
If E-UAE tries to work with this translated key symbol, it then has to
somehow convert that back into a raw keycode appropriate to if that key
were pressed on an Amiga keyboard (and then AmigaOS will use its keymap
settings to translate it into a key symbol again). This requires that E-UAE
know about international keyboard layouts, and requires the graphics system
to report unique events for all host keys (SDL does not completely support
some international layouts, for example).
One solution is for UAE to instead ask the host operating system for the raw
keycode corresponding to a key-press and map that to a raw Amiga keycode.
This is potentially easier and more accurate, since we are now converting
like to like, apples to apples, raw key-presses to raw key-presses. The
problem now is, instead of having to support different international
keyboard layouts, UAE has to understand different keyboard types (e.g.,
standard PC104/5 keyboards, Mac keyboards, Sun keyboards) and - more
annoyingly - the different raw keycodes that different operating systems and
different graphics systems on the same operating system assign to what are
logically or even physically identical keys.
The upshot of all this is that raw key-mapping is currently (optionally)
supported when:
a) E-UAE is built with the X11 graphics driver, your X server supports the
XKB extension and you are using a keyboard which produces xfree86
keycodes (e.g., PC and Mac keyboards with XFree86 on Linux do);
b) E-UAE is built with the SDL graphics driver and you are running it on
Linux on XFree86 with a PC or Mac keyboard, on MacOS X, on BeOS or on
AmigaOS (or an AmigaOS clone);
c) E-UAE is built with the BeOS graphics driver; or
d) E-UAE is built with the AmigaOS graphics driver.
As I said above, raw key-mapping better supports international keyboards, so
is recommended for most users, although its not terribly well tested and
some problems may exist. One such problem is that the command-key sequences
listed above will work as if you had a US keyboard rather than whatever
international flavour of keyboard you actually have. I'll fix this eventually.
When raw key-mapping is optional, it is enabled with a config option. When
using the SDL graphics driver, add
sdl.map_raw_keys=true
to your config file. When using X11, add
x11.map_raw_keys=true
Both the SDL and X11 graphics driver will try to enable raw key-mapping by
default if they can support it on your host platform.
Note that the AmigaOS version of E-UAE when built with native AmigaOS
graphic support and the BeOS version when built with native BeOS graphics
support both always do raw key mapping, so no comparable config options is
supported or required in these situations. Note also, however, that the
command-key problem described above is exhibited in both cases.
