Max,
This is exactly for this precise reason (people not immediately understanding why their keyboard works differently in windows than mac) that Parallels should add an alternative solution for keyboards (add an alternative, not change the current solution). Just doing scancodes transitions is not the best experience for people with no real prior windows experience and installing it on their new MacIntel through Parallels Desktop. The only thing people with non-US keyboard can do today is find a hand-made keyboard mapping on this forum or write one themselves. This is not an experience affordable by all users. And go try to use a french or belgian MacBook Pro and try to live without < > @ \ and with some other keys at locations differing from those printed on the keyboard. This experience is not worth spending 79 USD on it. You'll want to throw the laptop through the window within 1 or 2 days of trying to work.
Like some other people, I built a windows custom keyboard mapping for my French/Belgian keyboard and I'm now quite happy with it. The key trick is to get the keyboard to react as close as possible as in Mac but in Windows. Then, you feel home when writing in the windows VM or in the Mac OS.
When I'm in my Windows VM, ctrl is ctrl, alt is alt, and apple-key is windows-key. Thanks to Parallels scancode handling. Good basis. There is no way to interpret some Mac Key as the AltGr of a windows keyboard, but I don't care nor need it, since I want to compose characters the Mac way, not the windows way. Composing a € (euro) symbol on my french/belgian Mac keyboard in Mac OS X implies pressing alt - $, and this is printed on the keys so it is easy to remember. Using a PC French/belgian keyboard under Windows I would have to press AltGr - e. With my mapping, when in my Windows VM, I press ctrl - $ to get that € symbol, very close to what I'd use on the Mac. And this is *that* kind of mapping that most Mac users (using only windows as a secondary tool) will expect by default. Because this is the most natural way to constantly switch between Mac OS and Windows when your keyboard is a Mac keyboard. The only real issue is the 'alt' key which windows interprets as a very special key, activating menus, which can't then be easily re-used for things like alt-€. But at least, except for the modifier key position, the other keys are at the right place. It takes shift - alt - ( to type a '[' when in Mac, I use shift - ctrl - '[' when in the VM. That is the only concession made to the exact Mac keyboard map.
Couldn't you imagine writing a single Windows keyboard driver specially crafted to be used inside the VM, so part of the VM Tools suite, that would get a copy of the current keyboard map of the host (at time of starting up the VM for instance) and would use that knowledge to auto implement the kind of mapping I described above? Somehow auto-inheriting the Mac keyboard map in Windows? I'm sure Linux users would love this too... As long as this would be an alternative way to the plain 'hardware' mapping you currently provide.
I know and appreciate Parallels working on many other very interesting new future features. I support Parallels Desktop for Mac in every way I can. I use it many hours a day writing software. I have a personal not perfect but close to solution to my keyboard map issue, and I don't feel dissatisfied with the product because of that. But I just would hope that nobody at Parallels consider the keyboard support 'done'. It is __not__ done. All it does is make sure Windows will see the keyboard as a PC keyboard. Which brings the wrong keyboard experience to the user.
Last edited: Aug 25, 2006
