Upgrading XMBC for keyboard?

[Lores]

I imagine that X-Mouse Button Control on steroids would allow for this:

#1] user presses a button for recording
#2A] user presses either any mouse button or any key on keyboard or other device
[or]
#2B] user presses either a combination of buttons / keys
#3] User applies options already available in XMBC to the recorder trigger[s]

So basically this would turn it into something like a Autohotkey or AutoIt but with GUI and with outcomes somewhat narrowed down to input / control / navigating; but nevertheless making macros available for more ordinary users and people using theoretically any device

Of course not every button and device would succumb to being recorded, as I guess it is propriety drivers what is translating physical interaction of a user with hardware into what Windows receives. But the key question here is: how much work would it take and how hard would it be? I mean: turning a media key of some Razer keyboard into a macro executing various mouse clicks will probably not work - but making the R key on the very same keyboard executing those clicks should not be a problem in terms of Windows seeing that R key?


Could it be that nobody yet saw a potential in commercially releasing such software - or is would it be too hard to write it, because of having to reverse engineer propriety drivers of various manufacturers and an ever extending list of new devices, each of which is used by a minuscule permille of population [thus preventing it from becoming profitable on the account of how much work-hours each such device would use up]?

[phil]

This has been requested before, and its possible to some extent (using keyboard hooks) but to do it at driver level would not be so straight forward, not least because of the requirements/cost to release a driver, and also may cause input problems with programs that don't allow simulated input (e.g. games with anti-cheat).

Its not something I personally want to get involve with. XMBC is enough of a resource drain (of the little spare time I have!).

However, there is a Keyboard Manager Microsoft's PowerToys that allows you to re-bind/re-map keyboard keys/shortcuts.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windo ... rd-manager. It does not support the sort of simulated keystrokes that XMBC does, but I would imagine, being open source, that would be the place for someone to implement such features, to extend power toys!

[Lores]

OK, thank you for your input and for the link to Keyboard Manager. I was not aware of existence of PowerToys

But what stuns me is despite a large communities around them and after so many years of development, Autohotkey and Autolt still do not have such GUI like X-MBC does. It's as they are stuck in the DOS area and are perfectly happy with individual users being able to write their own versions of elements of Norton Commander, being oblivious to how Windows looks like

But that is of course something to be discuss on related forums and not here

[phil]

Windows looks different every 3 years or so... Its getting difficult to keep up!
And AHK is much more script driven which has its uses/benefits too.
The beauty of the Windows ecosystem is in the diversity of its available applications!