Translations

The keyboard driver carries out the following translations:

• Scan codes to virtual-key codes (keyboard-interrupt handler)
• Virtual-key codes to ANSI characters (ToAsciiEx)
• ANSI characters to OEM characters (AnsiToOem and AnsiToOemBuff)
• OEM characters to ANSI characters (OemToAnsi and OemToAnsiBuff)
• OEM or ANSI characters to virtual-key codes (OemKeyScan, VkKeyScanEx, and MapVirtualKeyEx)
• Virtual-key codes to scan codes (MapVirtualKeyEx)

The keyboard-interrupt handler converts scan codes to virtual-key codes before sending keystrokes to Windows. Windows calls the ToAsciiEx function to convert virtual-key codes to ANSI characters when generating WM_CHAR messages. Windows applications call the AnsiToOem and OemToAnsi functions to convert ANSI characters to OEM-specific characters, and OEM-specific characters to ANSI characters. Windows and Windows applications call OemKeyScan and VkKeyScanEx to generate scan and virtual-key codes for given OEM or ANSI characters.

See also ToAsciiEx, AnsiToOem, AnsiToOemBuff, MapVirtualKeyEx, OemToAnsi, OemToAnsiBuff, VkKeyScanEx