Keyboard King

Speed up your keyboard

Contents

1. What is the initial delay of a key?

2. What is the repeat rate of a key?

3. What are key messages?

4. What is a hot key?

5. What is an accidental key repeat?

6. Will the program slow my system down?

7. I have found a bug in the program, what should I do?

8. Where can I find more help?

9. How can I find out which version I am running?

10. Where can I find the latest version of the program?

11. How much does the program cost?

1. What is the initial delay of a key?

The initial delay is the time between the key pressed and key repeat messages when a key is held down by the user.

When a key that has a very high repeat rate is pressed, multiple keys often show up on the screen because the key was actually held down for a short period of time.  Setting the initial delay to a higher value overcomes this, at the expense of a slight delay when you hold down a key.

In other words, set this value to at least 100 milliseconds (one tenth of a second) to avoid having key repeat messages occur when you don't want them.

2. What is the repeat rate of a key?

The repeat rate is the number of key repeat messages that are generated per second.  Keyboard King allows you to set this value up to 200 repeats per second, which is usually too high for anything useful.

Set this between 50 and 120 for arrow keys, and between 30 and 50 for the rest to get the most efficiency out of text editing operations.

3. What are key messages?

The keyboard communicates with the system using three types of keyboard messages:

• Key pressed: Sent from the keyboard as soon as a key is pressed.  This informs the system that the key has gone from an up state to a down state.

• Key repeat: If a key is held down rather than tapped, key repeat messages are sent from the keyboard at a certain rate.  The rate is determined by the repeat rate setting.

• Key released: A release message is sent after a key is been held down or tapped.  This informs the system that the key has gone from a down state back to an up state.
  

4. What is a hot key?

A hot key is a combination of keys that are held down at the same time to perform an operation.  For example, Control + C is the hotkey for the Copy operation in Windows.

Keyboard King has its own hot key, which turns the program on and off.  This can be set to whatever key combination you like, as long as it is not already used by the system.  (e.g. you couldn't use Control + C).

5. What is an accidental key repeat?

Accidental key repeats occur when the repeat rate is set too high.  Increasing the repeat rate of a key will lower your accuracy making it hard to get the key to repeat the exact number of times you want.

The initial delay setting also contributes to accidental key repeats.  Setting this too low will produce multiple key repeats when only one is desired.  Quickly tapping each key avoids this problem, but it's better to increase the initial delay to a level where you can type freely without key repeats.

A value greater than 100 milliseconds for the initial delay will ensure this doesn't happen.  And setting the repeat rate below 70 per second will help precision greatly.

6. Will the program slow my system down?

Keyboard King only uses resources when there are keys being pressed, otherwise it sits waiting for key presses without using unnecessary resources.

Setting the repeat rate to a high value may have an adverse affect on some programs that cannot deal with a large number of keystrokes.  If this happens then you should slow the repeat rate down.

7. I have found a bug in the program, what should I do?

Please report any bugs you find.  All bug reports will be treated with priority, even small problems.

To send a bug report, use the feedback form on the contact page to send the details.  Please include a contact e-mail address, the version of Keyboard King you were using at the time, and a brief description of the problem.

You do not have to own a registered copy of the program to be allowed to file a bug report.  Feel free to add suggestions also.

8. Where can I find more help?

Press the F1 key while on an item in the settings window to get specific help.

The 'Help...' option in the popup menu provides detailed offline help.

The 'Tutorial...' option in the popup menu will guide you through setting up the keys.

9. How can I find out which version I am running?

Start the program and right click the icon in the system tray to bring up the menu.

Select 'About...' to display the about window.  The version is in the upper right of the window.

10. Where can I find the latest version of the program?

http://keyboardking.com/latest_version.html.

11. How much does the program cost?

Since the release of version 1.12, the program is freeware.

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