Keystroke Editor

The Keystroke Editor is a part of this program that does keystroke manipulation. It is used to define keyboard macros. Keyboard macro consists of the activation hotkey and the key sequence. Activation hotkey is a key or a key combination that is used to trigger a macro. Key sequence is a sequence of key presses and releases that will be simulated by this program. Each key should be pressed (key down) and then released (key up).

Keystroke Editor looks like this:

Click on the fields in the picture for explanation

Windows Vista
If you have Windows Vista OS, you need to run this program as an Administrator. To do so, right click on the program executable and choose the "Run as administrator" option from the popup menu.

Working with macros
This program works with macros. You can create a new macro or change, remove or record an existing macro.

Macro list
The list of available macros is in this list:

When you select the macro, you can remove it, change it or initiate a keyboard sequence recording.

Add a new macro
When you create a new macro, you will have to select the activation hotkey and to enter a key sequence (if it is possible) for that macro.

Activation hotkey can be entered in the Activation Hotkey field, or set using the Macro Activation Hotkey dialog. To activate the Macro Activation Hotkey dialog, you need to click on the button right to the Activation Hotkey field.

Macro Activation Hotkey dialog can be used when the Activation Hotkey field in the Add/Change Macro dialog cannot be used or is not clear enough. For example, if you want to have the Ctrl+DOWN ARROW as a hotkey, you cannot enter that hotkey in the Activation Hotkey field. However, you can start the Macro Activation Hotkey dialog and click on the Ctrl check box and then select the DOWN from the list.

Since macro can be a sequence of keys that produce some text, you can enter that text in the Simulated keystrokes field:

When you finish creating the macro, it will be shown in the Available macros list. Macros from this list can be removed, changed or recorded. Also, when you select some macro from the list, a detailed list of key strokes will appear in the keystrokes table in the lower half of the bottom of the window.

Keystrokes table
Kestrokes table consists of the detailed list of key strokes that will be produced during the macro playback. It consists of three rows: key down, key up and delay. The Key down will simulate a key being pressed while the key up will simulate a key being released. The Delay row will make a delay (in mili seconds) after each keystroke. Columns in this table represent an order in which those keystrokes would be simulated.

In the picure above, you can see which keystrokes will be simulated to produce the "Hello World!" text. The keystrokes are exactly the same as you would type them on the keyboard. First, you need to hold the Shift key and press the 'h' key. That would produce the upper case 'H'. The Shift key needs to be released and then the rest of the text is typed. At the end, there is the '!' character, which is typed using the Shift key again. First, the Shift key is pressed, then the '1' key is pressed and released, and at the end the Shift key is released.

Keystrokes can be entered/changed manually, without the Simulated keystrokes filed. To do so, you just need to drag the key from the keyboard picture, and to drop it in the Keystrokes table. Depending on the cell you are dropping on, the key will be dropped on the key down or key up row. If you want to generate both key down and up keystrokes with a single drop, enable the Intelligent Drag And Drop check box.

There is a popup menu that is activated when you right click on the table:

The Clear key option clears the cell without moving surrounding cells to the left. The Insert keystroke option inserts a new column in the table and moves the existing columns to the right (at the place of insertion). The Delete keystroke option deletes the selected column (and moves the rest of the table to the left), while the Delete cell option deletes just one selected cell and moves the rest of the row to the left.

Show key names/Key captions
You can choose whether to display key names or key captions in the Keystrokes table. The difference is that some keyboard layouts have different captions for the same keys. For example, if you look at the 'š' key on the picture, it has the OEM_4 name and the 'š' caption. On US keyboard layout, it has the '[' caption.

Simulated keystrokes
If you want to change the text without dragging and dropping, you can do it two ways. First, just above the Kestrokes table, there is the Simulated keystrokes text field which can be used to change the text. When you change the text, you need to click on the Put in table button.

Or, you can click on the Change button left to the Available macros list and invoke the Change dialog which also has the Simulated keystroke field. Change the text and click on the OK button.