Vine Server appears to be overriding keyboard remappings

Vine
1

I am running a Mac Mini OS X 10.4.9 (Tiger). I am using Windows keyboards because they are a dime a dozen.

I prefer to use the “Ctrl” button on the windows keyboard for the “Mac Command” button, as I am used to Ctrl+X,C,V for cut,copy,paste on all of my Windows boxes. I have been successful in switching this by either using DoubleCommand, or System Preferences->Keyboard&Mouse->Modifier Keys.

This works wonderfully as long as my keyboard is local to the Mac Mini. The problem I run into is when I try to use a remote keyboard through Vine Server 2.1. No matter what I change the keyboard mappings to, I cannot get the desired effect, and it appears that Vine Server is overriding my keyboard remapping. I have tried with both RealVNC and TightVNC, both with the same issue.

Any ideas why this might be, and how this can be corrected?

FYI: Vine Server seems to prefer the “Alt” key as the “Mac Command” key.

2

As I recall you will need to do those mapping on the SUT since that stuff is done at the OS and user level of the machine under control. That is my best memory on this issue. Others may know of mappings that work otherwise.

3

Forgive my ignorance, but what is the “SUT”, and how would I make the changes there?

4

I call it the SUT, mostly out of habit since in Eggplant
our flagship product we refer to the Vine Server system as the system under test (SUT). I’m sorry I was confusing to you on that issue. So, that said, you will have to configure the mappings as I recall on the remote system (where Vine Server is installed) to the same mappings as that which you desire to be on your Vine Viewer system. At least that is my understand, and I’m not at a site right now to verify/validate. You may want to try it, and see if that works for you.

5

I am not sure that is a good way to solve the problem, as I would then have “broken” my local Windows mappings. I still think that Vine is doing some funny keyboard mapping, as if I plug in my Windows keyboard directly into the Mac, my Windows key maps to the Mac Command key, but if I go through Vine Server, my Alt key maps to my Command key.

6

Ken:

Vine Server has it’s keymappings hard coded to comply with a standard mac US-101 keyboard. It doesn’t detect or know what your keyboard really is or if you have setup additional overrides.

Unfortunately at the API level we can only press a keycode, not a character.
So when it receives a “Control Down” it presses the keycode for where we expect a US-101 Control Key to be. If that’s been remapped to something else then you’ll get something else.

7

[quote=“JonathanOSX”]Vine Server has it’s keymappings hard coded to comply with a standard mac US-101 keyboard. It doesn’t detect or know what your keyboard really is or if you have setup additional overrides.

Unfortunately at the API level we can only press a keycode, not a character.
So when it receives a “Control Down” it presses the keycode for where we expect a US-101 Control Key to be. If that’s been remapped to something else then you’ll get something else.[/quote]

If that were the case, then the receiving Mac operating system should receive the keycode, and process it accordingly to what I have told the Mac OS to do with said keycode. So based on this, I would assume if in the Mac preferences I changed the mappings for a particular “key” to do something else, it should just do it.

When I change keyboard mappings on a keyboard connected to a local computer, the keyboard is still sending out the same keycode to the operating system, but now the operating system is responding differently depending on the mapping. If I switch out the keyboard, what ever key generates the remapped keycode will behave to the remapping. So why is this not the case when using Vine Server? Why is it that no matter what I change the special keys to do under the preferences they are ignored over Vine Server connection?