◊ Do you like this little hack? Send a nice postcard to:
Valentina Pavia
Via Mancini 19
10131 Torino
Italy
(don’t forget to put your name and address on it, so I can add you to my registered users’ database).
• Introduction
◊ KeyClicks is a control panel that plays some very short sounds when you press a key. I made it because many people I know have trouble with the PowerBook and Duo keyboards (they have little feedback, so you can't tell whether a key was pressed or not). The key-clicking utilities I already had wouldn't let the hard disk spin down because they didn't keep everything in memory.
◊ KeyClicks is very small: it uses about 2K of system memory if you only want the simple click and about 12K if you want different sounds for different keys. It is also very easy to use, and it only costs you a postcard and a stamp.
◊ Since the key clicks may get on your nerves after a while, there's a user-defined hot key to turn them on or off on the fly at any time. Also, you may start your Mac with KeyClicks off (and turn it on later with the hot key) by selecting the "Off" button in the control panel; KeyClicks will still be loaded at startup, but it will be disabled.
◊ KeyClicks seems to be very slow on some of the new Mac models; the sound playing routines take a longer time than usual to start and stop plating on these machines. My Power Mac 6100, for example, is much slower than the Duo 230. Sorry, there's not much I can do about it…
• Installation
◊ Move the KeyClicks control panel to your Control Panels folder (inside the System folder) and restart your Macintosh. Use the control panel to set your preferences as follows:
- [On/Off]: Enable or disable the key clicks; if you select the "off" button and restart your Mac, the KeyClicks routines will still be loaded, but they will be disabled - you may enable them at any time with the hot key. This is useful if you do need the clicks at times, but don't want them to be active at startup. Remove KeyClicks from the system folder if you want to disable it completely.
- [On/off hot key]: Click on this field to choose your hot key. It will let you turn the clicks on and off on the fly, without going to the control panel.
- [Play on menu-equivalent cmd keys]: If this option is enabled, KeyClicks will play a sound when you issue a menu command from the keyboard.
- [Play on auto-repeat keystrokes]: If this option is enabled, KeyClicks will play its sounds repeatedly when you keep a key pressed. If it's off, only the first character typed will play a sound.
- [Use less memory (only one sound)]: This option tells KeyClicks to play the same sound for all keys; if it is enabled, KeyClicks will only load one sound (the basic click) at next startup and will use very little memory. You may also use this option if having different sounds played while you type gets you confused or distracted.
- [Show startup icon]: Show KeyClick's icon at startup.
• Changing the sounds (expert users only)
◊ If you want to change the sounds used by KeyClicks, you can do so by using ResEdit or any other resource editor. All sounds are played synchronously (the machine hangs until the sound is over), so you don't want to use long sounds. The sound resources should have their System and Locked bits set and all other bits clear, and they should be numbered as follows:
- 'snd ' ID=128 -> basic sound (also played when another sound can't be found);
- 'snd ' ID=129 -> caps sound (played on any key when caps lock or shift is down);
- 'snd ' ID=130 -> spacebar sound (played on spacebar);
- 'snd ' ID=131 -> delete sound (played on delete, forward delete, esc and clear);
- 'snd ' ID=132 -> return sound (played on return and enter);
- 'snd ' ID=133 -> arrow sound (played on tab and the four arrow keys);
- 'snd ' ID=134 -> command sound (played on any key when command is down).
◊ PLEASE DO NOT DISTRIBUTE ALTERED VERSIONS OF KEYCLICKS. If you want to give away your own sounds for use with KeyClicks, use a separate resource file and pass it along with the original KeyClicks files (i.e. the control panel and this document).
• Wake-up sound (expert users only)
◊ A friend of mine complained his Duo wouldn't play the first key click after a few seconds of silence. I tested KeyClicks myself on a Duo 230 and it worked just fine. I believe some other control panel was causing the problem, but I added a quick hack to fix it in case you really need to do so. KeyClicks now looks for a 'snd ' resource with ID=1000 at startup; if it finds one, then it plays it before any sound that comes after a long silence. The length of the silence is defined by the resource name, which has to be the number of seconds to wait before playing the wake-up sound. Here's an example: 'snd ' ID=1000 name="10" would be played before any other sound if more than 10 seconds had passed since last key click.
◊ KeyClicks will have no 'snd ' ID=1000 resource when you get it, so you'll have to add one yourself if you want to enable the wake-up sound. The best sound to use is one that can't be heard (like a short silence), so you just get the normal key click sound. Or you may want to paste in a nice long "Yawn" with a long wake-up pause (i.e. a resource name like "600", wich means 600 seconds or 10 minutes) and have your mac yawn when you type the first key after a coffee break.
• Version history
◊ 1.02 - Recompiled with latest version of the compiler and updated documentation
◊ 1.01 - Added wake-up sound hidden feature
◊ 1.0 - First release
• Acknowledgements
◊ Many thanks to Domizio Demichelis for the idea and suggestions and to Fabrizio Oddone for his beta testing.
