seedkeys

A reckoner seed: keys, key codes named — machines/seeds/seedkeys.shoddy

Summary

seedkeys is a seed: a small file that plugs one machine's words — its named commands — into the reckoner calculator. This one brings keys to a prompt: KEYNAME, KEYGLYPH and KEYIS answer what a physical key code stands for.

This seed exists because a note was wrong. halifax listed keys among the machines a prompt could not reach. The note filed it under “raw keystrokes, which InputLine already owns” — the same live-resource heading as the windows and the sockets. It is not one. keys reads no keyboard and owns no device. ClassifyKey takes a number and answers which key that code stands for. KeyGlyph and IsKey are questions about that answer. The whole machine is a lookup table, and its header says “Standalone: includes nothing.”

Whatever produced the code — a scribbler event, a log file, a person typing 262 at a prompt — is somebody else's business. So there was never a rule in the way, only a misfiling.

Why It's Useful

“What is key code 262?” is the question. Before this seed, the only way to answer it was to write a program. Anyone reading a scribbler event log wants this answer at a prompt. So does anyone working out why a hotkey does not fire.

GameKey does not cross the bridge, and does not need to. There is no key cell, and a type with eleven cases would be a poor one. Every question a caller asks of a GameKey is already answered by a string or a boolean — a plain true-or-false value. So the three words take the code and answer those questions directly, and ClassifyKey stays inside.

KEYNAME answers the glyph for a letter or digit — the printed character itself — and the key's name otherwise. That is one word rather than two because it is one question: which key is this? An answer of "char" would only make the caller ask again.

A key code is a whole number and nothing else. A negative or fractional one is refused, rather than quietly reported as "other". That is the answer that would look right and be wrong.

User's Guide

> 262 KEYNAME
x: "left"

> 81 KEYNAME
x: "Q"

> 262 KEYGLYPH
x: ""

> 81 "q" KEYIS
x: True

> 9999 KEYNAME
x: "other"

KEYIS is deliberately case-insensitive: capital and small letters match alike. A physical letter key always reports uppercase, so matching against "q" is what a caller means.

Word Reference

Word	Description
KEYNAME ( code -- str )	Which key a physical key code stands for: `"left"`, `"right"`, `"up"`, `"down"`, `"space"`, `"enter"`, `"esc"`, `"tab"`, `"back"`, the glyph itself for a letter or digit, or `"other"`.
KEYGLYPH ( code -- str )	The character a letter or digit key stands for, and `""` for every named key and anything unmapped. `KEYNAME` is the one that names the rest.
KEYIS ( code s -- flag )	Whether that code is the letter or digit s. Case does not matter, because a physical letter key always reports uppercase.

Who Uses It

	User	How
	halifax	The calculator's key-code words — naming a physical key code without writing a program to do it.

A mill — a complete Shoddy program — claims this seed by folding RckSeedKeys over its reckoner state. That is all halifax does.

The Machines It Uses

	Machine	Why
	cuttle	The `Cell` type the answers cross the bridge as.
	keys	The domain this seed bridges: `ClassifyKey`, `KeyGlyph` and `IsKey`.
	reckoner	`RckReg` and the argument readers, including `RckWholeArg`, which is what refuses a key code that is not one.
	seq	`Pair`, for reading the two arguments `KEYIS` takes.