Unicode to Notes

Noob question...how do I take in unicode in 1.8? I am thinking of getting an X-Keys pad, which you can set up to spit a unicode character on press and a different one on release. I'd like to translate that to Note On and Note Off messages, respectively. The software that Bome's will feed the resultant MIDI into is High End Systems' Hog 4 PC, a lighting and video controller.

Hi atavacron

Doesn't the XKey send MIDI? It would be easier to use MT Pro to receive standard MIDI and translate it to be different messages on press and release. If you need to use Unicode, what types of characters were you hoping to use? MT Pro can only recognize standard keystroke commands now.

Thanks
Jared

I'd love to use MIDI of course. I don't believe X-keys will output anything other than conventional keyboard combinations, sequences, and mouse coordinates. Unicode is a handy way to stay away from any of the regular keyboard keys, which are also in use in my application.

chiming in...
MIDI Translator's incoming keystroke action does not (currently) consider which letters/characters are produced by a specific key. It is more low level and only looks at the key -- almost independent from the letter it produces. There are computer keyboards which you can program to produce "extended" keys or so. They work fine with MT Pro, and don't overlap with any keys on the normal computer keyboard -- at least, that's what users have reported.

Anyway, you can always use MT to translate a down press on a computer keyboard to something else than the "up press", i.e. release of the same key.

Florian

Sounds like no matter what I assign them to (even QWERTY) it'll show up as something distinct?

pretty much. There is some special logic for the letters A...Z so that e.g. Ctrl-Y stays the same, no matter where the Y is on the keyboard. Except that, a key is a key, no matter which unicode character it produces.

Note that for the outgoing Keystroke action, there is the "Text" option, which will produce the same Unicode text, no matter which keys produce that text. You obviously need the "Text" option for incoming keystrokes, too. It's on our TODO list!

But maybe you get some mileage by using rarely used keys? e.g. the number pad keys?

Thanks,
Florian

Thanks for engaging me on this. Basically the deal is that the keyboard is in constant use in the Hog program, but all the key combos used for control are basic (regular letters, numbers, number pad, alt-, ctrl-, etc). So foreign-to-English characters (altgr- comes to mind) are up for grabs, as is Unicode. I guess I'm just a little reluctant to be the guinea pig when it comes to buying a $230 text-based controller and seeing if it'll work. Text combo input in MT would certainly solve that, true.

The kicker here is that X-Keys' program for Mac, ControllerMate, will absolutely put out MIDI messages (DvlsAdvct was right there) - but MacroWorks, their equivalent program for PC, won't do it. Somehow I don't think running ControllerMate in a Mac emulator as part of real-time show control on a PC is a good idea.

I'll prioritize the "Typed Text" Input action higher, but not sure when it'll be available...
Thanks,
Florian