Inside Macintosh: Text /

Appendix C - Keyboard Resources

About the Keyboard Resources

The keyboard resources are Macintosh resources that facilitate worldwide keyboard handling and support the Macintosh script management system. They specify how keyboard input is converted to text for a particular writing system, language, or region. The Event Manager, the Script Manager, and the Menu Manager use the information in these resources to convert keystrokes to character codes, to switch input among different script systems, and to display the icon of the current keyboard in the Keyboard menu.

Note

Other Apple publications use the term ASCII code for character code (the 8-bit integer representing a text character generated by a key or a combination of keys on the keyboard or keypad) and the terms key-down transition code and response code for virtual key code (the key code that actually appears in keyboard events--that is, the value produced after a raw key code [the original value generated by a keyboard] has been mapped through the key-map resource). The terms character code, raw key code, and virtual key code are preferred in this book. ASCII code is limited here to the 7-bit code representing a character from the lower half of the Standard Roman character set.

---

Subtopics

What the Keyboard Resources Are

Key Translation