Keyboard file in windows

Details of extension .keyboard

1 extension(s) and 0 alias(es) in our database

Below, you can find answers to the following questions:

  • What is the .keyboard file?
  • Which program can create the .keyboard file?
  • Where can you find a description of the .keyboard format?
  • What can convert .keyboard files to a different format?
  • Which MIME-type is associated with the .keyboard extension?

Amaya Keyboard Configuration Data

Other types of files may also use the .keyboard file extension. If you have helpful information about .keyboard extension, write to us!

Can’t open a .keyboard file?

If you want to open a .keyboard file on your computer, you just need to have the appropriate program installed. If the .keyboard association isn’t set correctly, you may receive the following error message:

Windows can’t open this file:

To open this file, Windows needs to know what program you want to use to open it. Windows can go online to look it up automatically, or you can manually select from a list of programs that are installed on your computer.

To change file associations:

  • Right-click a file with the extension whose association you want to change, and then click Open With.
  • In the Open With dialog box, click the program whith which you want the file to open, or click Browse to locate the program that you want.
  • Select the Always use the selected program to open this kind of file check box.

Supported operating systems

Windows Server 2003/2008/2012/2016, Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10, Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Mac OS X, iOS, Android

Quickly Rename Windows Files with a Keyboard Shortcut

We love and talk about Microsoft Windows Keyboard Shortcuts, but one that always gets passed over is a useful little button for renaming files. If you’re like me and you regularly work with images and download several gigs of test files each day, then renaming becomes a complete chore, and a hotkey can be a time-saver.

In Windows when you select a file and press the F2 key you can instantly rename the file without having to go through the context menu. At first glance, this shortcut seems rather basic. As seen in the screenshot below, it’s the same thing that the context menu delivers.

However, when you combine it with another renaming trick (also available from the context menu by holding shift + right-click might I add), it becomes immensely useful. That is if you use your PC for processing photos. To do it, just select a group of files and then press the F2 key, each file in the selection will be given the same name with a sequential number following after. If you recently took a trip to Australia and need a quick way to organize photo names, this is it, and it doesn’t require any messy third-party software to get the job done. There are probably other files this might be useful for as well, but for photos this is king.

Tip: Just in case you want to practice some authentic Keyboard Kung Fu, instead of using a mouse to select multiple files you can use shift + the arrow keys.

18 Comments

Nice tip, didn’t know that! Another tip is to use the FastStone Image Viewer:

* F2 will rename the selected files.
* F4 gives a very powerful renaming tool that allows you to automatically add sequence numbers, date and/or time picture taken, plus any other text you wish to add.

FastStone Image Viewer is a free download from http://www.faststone.org/download.htm I reckon this is one of the best, most intuitive (to Windows users) programs around.

Cool tip! I never knew that. Is there anyway to have the F2 function of “rename” applied to a keyboard shortcut?

Yes its a cool tip and a way to rename quickly but when it comes to real thing BatchRenameFiles Tool really works well. Thanks, Fedya

I work on a daily basis with a bunch of different files and the perfectionist in me loves to keep them organized. You can only imagine how many different programs I’ve tried and for how long I had to do everything the hard way! Up until I found out about KrojamSoft! These guys made my life so much easier. This batch renaming software lets users add/remove suffixes and prefixes, change entire names of files and folders at once, change timestamps, convert uppercase to lowercase and the other way around… Perfect!

You just improved my quality of life! Thank you!

On pressing f2 key on my laptop brightness increases​

This is happening because on some laptops (like my HP) the F-keys have more than one purpose. The F2 on my laptop does the same lowering of brightness, and so does F3 (raises brightness). If you look closely you will see a little “star” icon on both the F2 and F3 keys, which indicates their dual role in controlling screen brightness. I’ll be willing to bet when you hit F9 the sound volume decreases, and increases when you hit F10, and mutes when you hit F11. This is all normal.

Now here’s the way to get around this problem: look in the lower left corner of your keyboard for a key called “fn”. This key basically turns on the function keys, allowing them to do their normal functions, in other words, to stop functioning as brightness/volume/mute controllers and such. First, do a single left-click on some file or folder you wish to rename (don’t click twice, or you will open it!). Second, push “fn” and then push F2 (you may have to push both together). When you do this, the filename will be highlighted and ready for retyping and renaming. Congratulations, your F2 key just operated in FUNCTION mode and not as a brightness controller.

Just remember that the “fn” button is needed whenever you use a normal functon key. When not pushed, the F-keys have another use, a dual purpose use. On my laptop the F7 key is both Play and Pause whenever a video is playing on my media player program. The F6 is a Rewind key and the F8 is a Fast-Forward key. F12 turns my wi-fi system signal transmitter on and off. Your laptop may have similar functions on all its F-keys. Hope that helps.

Windows 10 keyboard tips and tricks

Whether it’s being productive, staying in touch, or just plain having fun, Windows 10 has lots of little tricks and shortcuts that can help you achieve more. Here are a just a few of them:

Smile and the world smiles with you

Emojis aren’t just for your phone anymore! The new emoji keyboard in Windows 10 lets you express yourself like never before. To use it:

During text entry, type Windows logo key + . (period). The emoji keyboard will appear.

Select an emoji with the mouse, or keep typing to search through the available emojis for one you like.

Type all the symbols like a pro

Sometimes you need to type a character that isn’t on your keyboard, like an em-dash (—) or the copyright symbol (©). If you have a numeric keypad on your keyboard, you don’t have to find one and copy and paste, you can just do it! Here’s how:

Hold down the Alt key on your keyboard.

With the Alt key held down, type the four-digit code on the numeric keypad for the character you want. (Include the leading 0 if that’s required.)

Note: This only works on the numeric keypad. This won’t work on the row of numbers at the top of the keyboard.

Release the Alt key.

Here’s just a few of the characters you can type with the Alt key:

Keyboard Input (Get Started with Win32 and C++)

The keyboard is used for several distinct types of input, including:

  • Character input. Text that the user types into a document or edit box.
  • Keyboard shortcuts. Key strokes that invoke application functions; for example, CTRL + O to open a file.
  • System commands. Key strokes that invoke system functions; for example, ALT + TAB to switch windows.

When thinking about keyboard input, it is important to remember that a key stroke is not the same as a character. For example, pressing the A key could result in any of the following characters.

  • a
  • A
  • ГЎ (if the keyboard supports combining diacritics)

Further, if the ALT key is held down, pressing the A key produces ALT+A, which the system does not treat as a character at all, but rather as a system command.

Key Codes

When you press a key, the hardware generates a scan code. Scan codes vary from one keyboard to the next, and there are separate scan codes for key-up and key-down events. You will almost never care about scan codes. The keyboard driver translates scan codes into virtual-key codes. Virtual-key codes are device-independent. Pressing the A key on any keyboard generates the same virtual-key code.

In general, virtual-key codes do not correspond to ASCII codes or any other character-encoding standard. This is obvious if you think about it, because the same key can generate different characters (a, A, ГЎ), and some keys, such as function keys, do not correspond to any character.

That said, the following virtual-key codes do map to ASCII equivalents:

  • 0 through 9 keys = ASCII ‘0’ – ‘9’ (0x30 – 0x39)
  • A through Z keys = ASCII ‘A’ – ‘Z’ (0x41 – 0x5A)

In some respects this mapping is unfortunate, because you should never think of virtual-key codes as characters, for the reasons discussed.

The header file WinUser.h defines constants for most of the virtual-key codes. For example, the virtual-key code for the LEFT ARROW key is VK_LEFT (0x25). For the complete list of virtual-key codes, see Virtual-Key Codes. No constants are defined for the virtual-key codes that match ASCII values. For example, the virtual-key code for the A key is 0x41, but there is no constant named VK_A. Instead, just use the numeric value.

Key-Down and Key-Up Messages

When you press a key, the window that has keyboard focus receives one of the following messages.

The WM_SYSKEYDOWN message indicates a system key, which is a key stroke that invokes a system command. There are two types of system key:

The F10 key activates the menu bar of a window. Various ALT-key combinations invoke system commands. For example, ALT + TAB switches to a new window. In addition, if a window has a menu, the ALT key can be used to activate menu items. Some ALT key combinations do not do anything.

All other key strokes are considered nonsystem keys and produce the WM_KEYDOWN message. This includes the function keys other than F10.

When you release a key, the system sends a corresponding key-up message:

If you hold down a key long enough to start the keyboard’s repeat feature, the system sends multiple key-down messages, followed by a single key-up message.

In all four of the keyboard messages discussed so far, the wParam parameter contains the virtual-key code of the key. The lParam parameter contains some miscellaneous information packed into 32 bits. You typically do not need the information in lParam. One flag that might be useful is bit 30, the «previous key state» flag, which is set to 1 for repeated key-down messages.

As the name implies, system key strokes are primarily intended for use by the operating system. If you intercept the WM_SYSKEYDOWN message, call DefWindowProc afterward. Otherwise, you will block the operating system from handling the command.

Character Messages

Key strokes are converted into characters by the TranslateMessage function, which we first saw in Module 1. This function examines key-down messages and translates them into characters. For each character that is produced, the TranslateMessage function puts a WM_CHAR or WM_SYSCHAR message on the message queue of the window. The wParam parameter of the message contains the UTF-16 character.

As you might guess, WM_CHAR messages are generated from WM_KEYDOWN messages, while WM_SYSCHAR messages are generated from WM_SYSKEYDOWN messages. For example, suppose the user presses the SHIFT key followed by the A key. Assuming a standard keyboard layout, you would get the following sequence of messages:

WM_KEYDOWN: SHIFT
WM_KEYDOWN: A
WM_CHAR: ‘A’

On the other hand, the combination ALT + P would generate:

WM_SYSKEYDOWN: VK_MENU
WM_SYSKEYDOWN: 0x50
WM_SYSCHAR: ‘p’
WM_SYSKEYUP: 0x50
WM_KEYUP: VK_MENU

(The virtual-key code for the ALT key is named VK_MENU for historical reasons.)

The WM_SYSCHAR message indicates a system character. As with WM_SYSKEYDOWN, you should generally pass this message directly to DefWindowProc. Otherwise, you may interfere with standard system commands. In particular, do not treat WM_SYSCHAR as text that the user has typed.

The WM_CHAR message is what you normally think of as character input. The data type for the character is wchar_t, representing a UTF-16 Unicode character. Character input can include characters outside the ASCII range, especially with keyboard layouts that are commonly used outside of the United States. You can try different keyboard layouts by installing a regional keyboard and then using the On-Screen Keyboard feature.

Users can also install an Input Method Editor (IME) to enter complex scripts, such as Japanese characters, with a standard keyboard. For example, using a Japanese IME to enter the katakana character г‚« (ka), you might get the following messages:

WM_KEYDOWN: VK_PROCESSKEY (the IME PROCESS key)
WM_KEYUP: 0x4B
WM_KEYDOWN: VK_PROCESSKEY
WM_KEYUP: 0x41
WM_KEYDOWN: VK_PROCESSKEY
WM_CHAR: г‚«
WM_KEYUP: VK_RETURN

Some CTRL key combinations are translated into ASCII control characters. For example, CTRL+A is translated to the ASCII ctrl-A (SOH) character (ASCII value 0x01). For text input, you should generally filter out the control characters. Also, avoid using WM_CHAR to implement keyboard shortcuts. Instead, use WM_KEYDOWN messages; or even better, use an accelerator table. Accelerator tables are described in the next topic, Accelerator Tables.

The following code displays the main keyboard messages in the debugger. Try playing with different keystroke combinations and see what messages are generated.

Miscellaneous Keyboard Messages

Some other keyboard messages can safely be ignored by most applications.

  • The WM_DEADCHAR message is sent for a combining key, such as a diacritic. For example, on a Spanish language keyboard, typing accent (‘) followed by E produces the character Г©. The WM_DEADCHAR is sent for the accent character.
  • The WM_UNICHAR message is obsolete. It enables ANSI programs to receive Unicode character input.
  • The WM_IME_CHAR character is sent when an IME translates a keystroke sequence into characters. It is sent in addition to the usual WM_CHAR message.

Keyboard State

The keyboard messages are event-driven. That is, you get a message when something interesting happens, such as a key press, and the message tells you what just happened. But you can also test the state of a key at any time, by calling the GetKeyState function.

For example, consider how would you detect the combination of left mouse click + ALT key. You could track the state of the ALT key by listening for key-stroke messages and storing a flag, but GetKeyState saves you the trouble. When you receive the WM_LBUTTONDOWN message, just call GetKeyState as follows:

The GetKeyState message takes a virtual-key code as input and returns a set of bit flags (actually just two flags). The value 0x8000 contains the bit flag that tests whether the key is currently pressed.

Most keyboards have two ALT keys, left and right. The previous example tests whether either of them of pressed. You can also use GetKeyState to distinguish between the left and right instances of the ALT, SHIFT, or CTRL keys. For example, the following code tests if the right ALT key is pressed.

The GetKeyState function is interesting because it reports a virtual keyboard state. This virtual state is based on the contents of your message queue, and gets updated as you remove messages from the queue. As your program processes window messages, GetKeyState gives you a snapshot of the keyboard at the time that each message was queued. For example, if the last message on the queue was WM_LBUTTONDOWN, GetKeyState reports the keyboard state at the moment when the user clicked the mouse button.

Because GetKeyState is based on your message queue, it also ignores keyboard input that was sent to another program. If the user switches to another program, any key presses that are sent to that program are ignored by GetKeyState. If you really want to know the immediate physical state of the keyboard, there is a function for that: GetAsyncKeyState. For most UI code, however, the correct function is GetKeyState.

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