Remapping keystroke for coherence start icon

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paul0926

Bit poster
I wanted to remap my keyboard so that it was more natural for windows XP. That means the apple/command key becomes the left alt key, and the alt/option key becomes with left windows key. That way, if you are a long time windows user you can continue using the keyboard in a manner that is consistant with all other windows keyboard out there.

Advice in this forum suggested using either autohotkey or sharpkeys. I chose sharpkeys so nothing would be running (plus sharpkeys makes windows logon work correctly as well). Both sharpkeys and autohotkey remap the keyboard based on keycodes.

Everything is perfect.... except..... clicking on the windows "start" icon in the dock, which is nicely placed there in coherence mode, no longer brings up the start menu. All it does is send a left alt to windows. (I tested and the same happens when autohotkey is used for keyboard remapping). So, parallels is obviously passing a keycode to the running windows system when this dock icon is pressed.

Can I change this keycode to a different value? I would need to set it to the remapped value.

For those wondering, left alt is 00_38 and left windows is E0_5B. I suppose the parallels start icon in the docs sends keystroke E0_5B to windows. I would like it to send 00_38.

I'm surprised the parallels dev team has not addressed this need. The posts asking for it go back a ways and it seems a reasonable request.

Paul
 
Thanks for the suggestion, John, but I do not see how to apply this. I do not want to change the OSX keys, and it seems that is the primary capability of the Ukelele scripts is for that purpose. I wanted to change the windows keys, which I have done. But in doing so, I broke the coherence start dock icon, which passes in a specific keycode to Windows.

Can you elaborate how I would use a Ukelele script for this purpose? My OSX keyboard is untouched and the way I want it, my windows keyboard has the two keys swapped and is the way I want it. But the parallels windows start icon in the dock passes the wrong keystroke to Windows now.

Thanks

Paul
 
Thanks again, John. It is amazing what reading the manual can do. Swapping command and control is there, but that is not what I want.

Here are the keys on the mac, left to right: control, option(alt), command

Here are the keys on a windows keyboard, left to right: control, windows, alt

Parallels already maps the command key on the keyboard to the windows key in the windows OS. This is good. What we need is not a swap of command and control, but a swap of command and option(alt). That would do it!

Well, it seems the support is not there out of the box yet with parallels. Perhaps something for a future release? I think, given the demand queries expressed in other threads, that the requirement is valid.

I'm ok now that I understand how it all works, but I will have to retrain my fingers for a while to be productive on windows and the local IT guys here will have a fit when they try to use windows on my computer for support purposes.

Paul
 
I see what you are digging at. I misled you. I don't want to change the keys for OSX, but for windows. The keyboard should stay the same for OSX, but only be remapped for windows use. I found various windows utilities. like the one you just mentioned, that will do this for windows and they work. But, then the parallels "start" icon that resides in the dock when in coherence mode no longer brings up the windows start menu when you click it. This is because the start icon passes a key to windows which has not been remapped in windows.

Here's why I am searching for this: in OSX, the command key is very common. cmd-Q quits an app, cmd-W closes a window, etc. It is very natural to put your thumb on the keyboard and hit Q, W,Z, whatever. So, I would never want to change the layout for OSX.

Well, the alt key is very common in Windows. The entire menu structure is driven from it. It is very natural to put your thumb on the alt key on a windows keyboard and then hit another key to invoke a windows menu function. It is not natural to do this when the key to be used is in a different location (where it currently is on the mac keyboard). In parallels, with any of the three options available (don't remap, swap cmd/ctrl, swap ctrl, remap +zxcvaf) the *windows* alt key remains in the uncomfortable position. So, it needs to be moved in windows and left in place in OSX.

Is this explanation any clearer?

Thanks again, John!

Paul
 
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