[comp.os.msdos.programmer] Changing the US keyboard to a Foreign Keyboard

atharp@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Athar Pasha) (08/01/90)

The keyb.com file that comes with DOS 3.3 allows one to change the keyboard
to that of a foreign country. This change is, however, limited to a few
European countries. My understanding is that the keyb.com command replaces
the keyborad table that is part of the BIOS with the one for the selected
country. This table has to be part of the keyboard.sys file. For some
of the countries in the Far and Middle East, the language characters are
nowhere close to the European characters. IBM markets their PCs in these
countries such that the keyboard.sys files has the necessary characters.

Does anybody out there know how to edit the keyboard.sys file or create a
new file such that these characters can be displayed? It seems that since
IBM markets their PCs in these other countries with the proper character
set, it should not be a very difficult task. In other words, since the chara-
cter bit-maps are already defined, all I should need to do is to replace one
of the existing languages with this new character set.

I'd appreciate hearing from anyone who can either help me directly or
refer me to approprate books/articles/magazines. Thank you.