[syslinux] kbdmap & ASCII > 128

[H. Peter Anvin]

Josef Siemes wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've just played around with kbdmap in pxelinux. I always wondered why there was no 
> translation for "AltGr"-Keys (the right 'Alt'-Key) (AltGr-Q generates "@" on a german 
> keyboard e.g.), and I found in conio.inc (syslinux 1.76):
> 

The answer is that AltGr doesn't exist on the default -- U.S. --
keyboard.  Don't blame me, blame IBM for that one...

> 
> So (from my small knowledge about asm ...) the character is read, tested for something (the 
> 'and'/'jz' - is this a test for >127?), and only if that didn't return zero the keymap translation
> is done. Why isn't every character translated? Is there some problem with this? Since the
> characters above 127 are also in the kbdmap-table, there should be no problem in translating
> them all? Or does the bios treat characters >127 different?
> 

It's not a test for > 127 -- it's a test for function keys (the and/jz
is a test for zero.)

>>From the label func_key - does this have to do with the F-Keys?
> 
> Looking at keytab-lilo.pl there seems to be something done with altgr-keymaps. Is there any
> chance one can e.g. get the AltGr-Mappings working in syslinux, or is there some major
> problem with this?

It would mean changing the format of the key file, and it's still likely
 that a lot of combinations simply still wouldn't exist.

	-hpa