Huddled Masses

Posts Tagged ‘Ergonomic Keyboard’

There have been a lot of blog posts around the internet about how to fix or change the “zoom” feature on the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 into a scroll up/down feature instead — my favorite is this one by Olivier Dagenais which suggested using an XSL transform.

However, nobody seems to have fixed the F-Lock problem … so I started digging into the command mapping to see what I could figure out. I’ve got a fix posted at the bottom, so if you don’t care how this works, just skip to the end. I’m working on a Natural Ergonomic 4000, but some of what I found should apply to any keyboard using Microsoft’s IntelliType software. What we all know by now is that it has xml-based command remapping. The definitions for the remapping are in a file called commands.xml in the install directory, which is, by default: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft IntelliType Pro”.

There’s two interesting things happening in the IntelliType software. First, the “My Favorites” buttons on the Natural 4000 don’t seem to be a part of this remapping scheme. Second, although all of the remapping can be done in the commands.xml file, the control panel (at least in Vista) doesn’t use the commands.xml file at all — it adds entries to the registry! Read the rest of this entry »