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The pages on this site contain documentation for very old MS-DOS software, purely for historical purposes. If you're looking for up-to-date documentation, particularly for programming, you should not rely on the information found here, as it will be woefully out of date.

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The [Keyboard] section in the SYSTEM.INI file specifies information the
keyboard driver uses to adapt its operation. The driver reads the type,
subtype, KEYBOARD.DLL, and OEMANSI.BIN settings from the SYSTEM.INI file
using the GetPrivateProfileInt and GetPrivateProfileString functions
(KERNEL.127 and KERNEL.128). The driver uses the values to prepare
translation tables and to modify driver operation.
 
The type setting specifies which type of keyboard layout the driver must
support. If the keyboard type is not the driver's default type, the driver
loads the language-specific keyboard library specified by the KEYBOARD.DLL
setting and calls that library's GetKbdTable function to install the
appropriate translation tables. If a subtype setting is given, the driver
also may use it to determine which translation tables to load. However,
since this setting specifies whether a keyboard of a given type has special
attributes, drivers most often use the subtype setting to determine whether
to test for certain special cases.
 
For many keyboards, the Windows Setup program automatically determines the
keyboard type and sets the appropriate value in the SYSTEM.INI file. If the
type for a given keyboard can not be accurately determined, a driver
developer can supply a modified SETUP.INF file which allows the user to
manually select the keyboard type during installation.
 
 
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