No "Break" key...

[ChuckC]

I ran across an interesting problem, recently, when using WinBatch & WinBatch Studio on a new Dell Ultrabook XPS-12.  This system is convertible between being an ultra light weight laptop and a tablet.  It is touch-screen enabled, has tilt and accelerometer sensors, and auto-rotates the screen between landscape & portrait as you change how you are holding it.

Anyway, the problem that I encountered is that I was testing a script in WinBatch Studio, and the script got into an infinite loop with a call to Message() in it.  The end result was the by the time I had clicked on the OK button in the displayed message box, I didn't have enough time to click on the toolbar button in WinBatch Studio that would have allowed me to abort the script.  As it was, I had to set a break point inside the loop to break it so that I could take control and end the script.

Now, all that may seem trivial and quite normal, but, the very first thing I wanted to do was just to hit CTRL+BREAK while the message box was displayed, so that after I clicked the OK button, the script would have aborted itself.  However, what I found was the keyboard for this system is lacking a few keys that seem to have become so little used on a full size keyboard that they were removed from the smaller keyboard used with this system.  There's no BREAK key, no PAUSE key, no SCROLL LOCK key, and no SYSTEM REQUEST key.  It does, however, still have a PRINT SCREEN key.  Also, given that it doesn't have a numeric keypad [not even via usage of "Function" key], it doesn't have a NUM LOCK key, either.  After playing around with the pop-up virtual keyboard that you can use on the touch screen, I discovered that all of the physically absent keys were also missing from the virtual keyboard, too.

I figured that I'd share this with other WinBatch users since at one time or another, we've all had to make use of CTRL+BREAK.  Also, I'm curious to know if anybody else is using newer touch screen enabled Win8 systems that have similar "features" regarding the removal of certain keys from the keyboard layout.

[....IFICantBYTE]

This may be of interest... http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/laptop/f/3518/p/19430669/20155393.aspx#20155393
You could possibly edit your scancode keymap in the registry.

[td]

Dr. Frankenstein had problems with his mashup too.