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Function Keys & the Escape Key |
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cdvorak
Newbie Joined: October 25 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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Posted: August 19 2008 at 3:25am |
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We use AccuTerm with a medical Practice Manager System (PMS). On some of the main screens of that program, users have the ability to search by Patient Name. The Function keys (f2-9) are used to access commonly used screens, all of which start off with the Patient Search field. And one of the keystrokes within the program is <escape><escape> = Cancel, or move back one screen. The problem occurs when users hit <escape> only once (accidentally), then one of the F keys. Accuterm interprets that as a letter, and inserts it into the search field, and our PMS then searchs on that letter. For example, <escape>F8 = 'G', and the first patient, with last name starting with 'G', pops up. So users, not paying attention, select the same wrong patient... Continually.... ********* So, can we edit the normal keyboard settings so that <escape><function key> doesn't do this? We have v 5.0e on most PC's, 5.3b on a few. On 5.3b, F8 = ^AG^M |
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PSchellenbach
Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150 |
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Hi cdvorak -
This is a tricky problem to resolve. The problem is that the ESC character is often used as a prefix for multiple functions and this is going to very hard to change. Things like PageUp, PageDown, Shift+Tab, all begin (internally) with an ESC character. The server has no way of determining whether the ESC character that it sees if because the user pressed the Escape key, or if it is part of another sequence. Some servers resolve this ambiguity by timing - it another character arrives after the ESC within a pre-defined window, then the ESC is part of a sequence, otherwise it is because the user pressed the Escape key. The only effective solution that I can see is to reprogram the Escape key to either send the entire Cancel sequence in a single keypress (sends 2 ESC characters on each keypress), or to disable the Escape key entirely and program another key to send the Cancel sequence. Either way, the users will need to be retrained about how to perform a Cancel. Let me know if you need more info, or have other ideas about how to solve this. Thanks, Pete |
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cdvorak
Newbie Joined: October 25 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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Pete: thanks for the quick reply! We'll have to play with it on our end. We'll have to decide what's the best course for us: re-training 400 users, or living with the unintended errors.
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cdvorak
Newbie Joined: October 25 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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I don't see a way to re-program the Escape key in AccuTerm. Am I missing something? Or did you mean re-programing it in our PMS? |
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PSchellenbach
Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150 |
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Hi -
The Escape key cannot be reprogrammed from the Keyboard settings screen - you need to use Notepad or Wordpad to edit the session configuration file (.atcf). You need to add the following line to the [Keyboard] section in this file:
Thanks, Pete |
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cdvorak
Newbie Joined: October 25 2007 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 5 |
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Yes, that does work. Thanks for all the info!
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Timbertoe
Newbie Joined: December 01 2008 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 18 |
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Hi Pete!
I have had to do a lot of repetitive work through a menu system over the last few days. I was able to really cut down on the keystrokes by programming certain function keys. As I was working, however, it would have been better if I could have programmed the one or more of the 4 symbol keys on the numeric keypad (/ * - +).
While cleaning up my config files, I noticed that the function keys all have a numeric value. I have not been able to find a listing of what they are and you do not have a tab in Settings|Keyboard for the numeric pad (you might want to consider that for some future release! :) )
I am using the vt100 emulation. Please send me the numbers I should use for these 4 keys plus the . and the Enter keys on the numeric pad. For doing things like I have been doing, the numeric pad would have been more efficient and the ergonomics would have been better.
Thanks!
Boyd
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PSchellenbach
Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150 |
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Hi Boyd -
Here is a list of the key numbers for the various non-alpha keys on the standard Windows keyboard (key numbers are shown in hex - you need to convert to decimal to use in AccuTerm's config file):
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PSchellenbach
Admin Group Moderator Joined: December 15 2003 Location: United States Status: Offline Points: 2150 |
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Update for AccuTerm 8 In AccuTerm 8, the session config file is in JSON format. The "keyboard" property contains individual properties for each programmed key. For example, to program the left-arrow key (virtual key code = 37 or \x25 in the above table) to send a Ctrl+U, and shift-left-arrow to send Ctrl+H, the following properties would be used in the config file:
You can use one of the online "JSON Prettifier" sites to make the JSON easier to edit - AccuTerm will be fine with that. Check the AccuTerm 8 Help, AccuTerm 8 Reference -> AccuTerm Programming -> Keyboard, for control character prefixes. The key property name is the word "key" followed by the Windows virtual key number. The key number can be modified by adding one of the modifiers from the table below. For a more complete list of Windows virtual key codes, see this page: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/inputdev/virtual-key-codes
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