Truly ergonomic and Mac OSX

I recently purchased a Truly Ergonomic keyboard (model 209) that I use both at home on my GNU/Linux machine and at work where - very sadly - I am obliged to use an macbook air sporting the last version of OSX.

While the keyboard is equipped with a few dip switches that allow to change the keycode of the modifier keys to naturally fit the "special needs" of OSX, these are too fragile to withstand daily toggling, and I therefore wanted to remap the keyboard via software, keeping the switches in their default position.

The problem I am currently facing, is that OSX - differently than other OS's doesn't detect the pressure of the two extra keys of model 209:

keycode 101 (keysym 0xff27, Hiragana_Katakana)
keycode 97 (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol)

I would like to know how to make OSX detect said events or - equally good answer - if there is any other method to get the TE keyboard work properly under OSX (without dip switches, using the CTRL keys as command ones and using the extra two mentioned above as CTRL).

For the records, I already tried keyremap4macbook, pckeyboardhack and ukelele, but none of them allows to achieve what I need.

Many thanks in advance for your help.

mac

Posted 2012-07-11T18:02:32.543

Reputation: 1 439

Which keys are you referring to? The documentation isn't exactly comprehensive. – Daniel Beck – 2012-07-11T18:14:23.037

It you are asking about the physical location of the keys on the keybard, they are the lower-left corner (keycode 101) and lower-right one (keycode 97). – mac – 2012-07-11T19:56:24.730

The keys labeled as control in dip switch 2 off in the quick start guide, and not defined for OS X otherwise? Looks like a strong hint it behaves as designed.

– Daniel Beck – 2012-07-11T20:01:12.077

@DanielBeck - Yes, I know what the kb is designed for, and I linked the quick start guide myself in HTML format. :O My question is indeed "I would like to know how to make OSX detect said events". The keyboard do send the events, the problem is with OSX (surprise, surprise!) and I would like to know it there is some clever guy/gal who managed to find a workaround for that software design limitation... – mac – 2012-07-11T20:26:16.753

@mac, manufacturer tags are not supposed to be created. As such, please remove the truly-ergonomic tag. – soandos – 2012-07-12T03:15:55.403

@soandos - Can you please link to some source for this guideline? I see there are loads of them on the system already (apple, microsoft, logitech, razer...). – mac – 2012-07-12T07:08:35.207

2http://meta.superuser.com/questions/2125/can-we-get-rid-of-the-company-tags http://meta.superuser.com/questions/3948/company-tag-necromancy-the-zombie-apocalypse significant community support in both topics, just some unwillingness by the guy running the sites prevents further deletion. – Daniel Beck – 2012-07-12T08:02:06.543

@DanielBeck - The liked threads seem to suggest the rationale is because vendors name do no narrow down the topic enough. This is not the case for the Truly Ergonomic that IMO is on par with iPhone or iPad tags (i.e. designate a very specific hardware). Or...? – mac – 2012-07-13T10:36:01.520

You asked for the guideline, there it is. In this case it'd be up for debate whether we'd count it as a manufacturer or product tag, as they basically have a single product with the same name. Still, I don't think the product warrants its own tag for question classification (yet). I expect your question to be not specific to this keyboard either, other non-standard keyboards likely have similar issues with similar solutions. I might be wrong there. – Daniel Beck – 2012-07-13T11:13:50.790

Answers

Truly Ergonomic + Mac user here. Controller Mate allows remapping of the left space bar (when the dip switch is set to non-space bar). No other software were able to even detect that keystroke. I would hazard to guess it allows remapping of the two extra keys on the 209 as well.

Tomas Lundell

Posted 2012-07-11T18:02:32.543

Reputation: 21

Thank you for the info. Do I understand correctly that you are using the keyboard in PC configuration (dip switch #2 == off)? It that's the case, will you have a chance - sometimes - to check if the keypresses are in fact detected (or you have a 207 model?) ? [Regardless: +1] – mac – 2012-07-22T10:05:24.790

With the new (v3?) firmware, left space sends "AppsKey" aka "Menu", which should be easier to remap. – Florian Jenn – 2013-06-11T08:42:43.343

I created a topic on Geekhack.org that explain how to remap internal keycodes used by the Truly-Ergonomic's firmware. That may help you...

Addwyn

Posted 2012-07-11T18:02:32.543

Reputation: 11

2That's it [although it might be not that easy for non-programmers to get to implement it]. If you will post here your solution (as per SuperUser best practices) I will gladly accept your answer! :) – mac – 2013-01-09T09:41:45.427

I dont have the keyboard but interested in one to use with OSX. I read somewhere on Geek Hack one user used Controller Mate ($25) to remap those keys. The Truly Ergonomic documentation also suggests this. I also heard that Truly Ergonomic was supposed to release software to remap the keys.

Jason Wirth

Posted 2012-07-11T18:02:32.543

Reputation: 101

Did you try creating a private.xml with KeyRemap4MacBook?

97 (0x61) is normally F6, and 101 (0x65) is F9. The Japanese kana key is normally 0x68 though. See KeyCode.data.

Try if any of these work:

<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::F6, KeyCode::A</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::F9, KeyCode::A</autogen>
<autogen>--KeyToKey-- KeyCode::JIS_KANA, KeyCode::A</autogen>

Lri

Posted 2012-07-11T18:02:32.543

Reputation: 34 501