Watershed’s internet kiosks have 5 special keys at the bottom: www. | .com | .co.uk | :-( | :-). In earlier versions of the keyboards, these keys were actually just F1-F5 (which the computer then had to map to the right text), but it seems the later keyboards are programmed to tell the computer that the actual key sequences have been pressed (so no software is required on the computer).

This is great, except I now want to replace the :-( and :-) keys with the functions Copy and Paste. Replacing the keycaps is easy, but what about converting the keypresses shift-; – shift-0 (or shift-9) into command-V, whilst still letting the ; – 0 and 9 keys work?

Step forward: ControllerMate. This amazing piece of software lets you build rather complicated setups from input device triggers, resulting in anything from other keypresses to applescripts. So the first step is to reassign the keys ; – 9 and 0 to not do anything. Then I had to make a system that could work out if they’d been pressed in very quick succession (in which case, do Copy or Paste), or individually (in which case press the key, with or without shift, depending).

I just wanted to share with you the ControllerMate flowchart that enables this.

(Click for full sized)

The only bug I can see is that if you hold down some of the affected keys, they don’t do a normal key repeat. This could probably be solved using some Pulse boxes, but I don’t really see the need to make it any more complicated.