FacetWin Terminal VT525 Function Keys

where the parameters are defined as:

DCS

The "Device Control String" is an escape character (0x1B) followed by "P" (0x50).

Ps1

The clear parameter. This has the following two values:

0 or none	- clears all keys before loading new values
1	- clears just the keys that are being defined

Ps2

The lock parameter. This defines whether or not to lock the function key definitions after programming the keys. This parameter is not currently implemented in FacetWin. Here are the valid parameter values:

0 or none	- locks the function key definitions
1	- leaves the function key definitions unlocked

Ps3

The modifier parameter. This designates whether the shifted, unshifted or alternate (Alt key) version of the key is programmed.

0, 2 or none	- programs the shifted function key
1	- programs the unshifted function key
3	- programs the alternate unshifted function key
4	- programs the alternate shifted function key

D…D

The key definition string, made up of two parts separated by a slash character ("/", 0x2F). It looks like, Kyn / Stn, where:

Kyn is the key identifier number. (see Table 1)

Stn is the string of hexadecimal codes to be programmed (see Table 2)

A series of keys can be programmed at one time by separating the individual key definition strings by a semicolon character (";", 0x3B), like this:

Ky1 / St1 ; Ky2 / St2 ; Kyn / Stn

ST

The string terminator. This is the escape character (0x1B) followed by a single backslash character ("\", 0x5C).

Examples

Function keys can be programmed with a simple UNIX shell script using the "echo" command. For example, let's say we want to program the shifted F1 key to send the word "hello" followed by a carriage return.

First, translating our string, "hello" plus carriage return, to the corresponding hexadecimal codes in Table 2, we get the following:

After concatenating the hexadecimal codes, Stn should be:     68656C6C6F0D

Looking in Table 1, we find that the key identifier (Kyn) for "Shift F1" is 11. Remembering from above that D…D is really just Kyn / Stn, for D…D, we now have :

At the top of Table 1, we see that to program Shift Function Keys, we can set Ps3 to 0.

In most cases we want to clear only the key(s) being programmed before loading the new values, so set Ps1 to 1, and we don't want to lock the function key definitions, so set Ps2 to 1.

Our full escape sequence now looks like:

Translating the escape character into octal (\033) for the "echo" command, and protecting the trailing backslash from unwanted shell interpretation, ("\" becomes "\\") we now have the one-liner shell script to program our sequence:

Now a second, more useful example:   programming F1 - F4 to be the VT100 keys PF1 - PF4.

Looking up the keynumbers (Kyn), ASCII string sequences, and hexadecimal codes (Stn) for what we want to program, we come up with:

Keeping the clear (Ps1) and lock (Ps2) parameters the same as before (both set to 1), and setting Ps3 to 1 for unshifted function keys we come up with these escape sequences:

Or by stringing the series of keys together, we get one escape sequence:

Using the "echo" command to program these sequences we would have:

 
Now that wasn't so bad after all, was it?     ;-)

Seriously though, if you have any questions or would like assistance when programming FacetWin Terminal function keys, please contact the FacetCorp Technical Support Department.