"I am going to have to take a look at Xbasic. If it has the ability to generate graphics such as charts,"

Yes. XB has a pretty good set of graphics functions. You can't make a first person shooter game with it, but...well..yes you could. You'd just have to use some external libraries to access something like DirectX.

But if you just want to draw static graphs and charts? Piece of cake.

"send inforamtion to Windows as if it were manually typed in from the keyboard, and intercept and react to keyboard entries (instead of having them go directly to Windows) then it would be quite attractive."

I'm not sure what you mean here. In windows, the keyboard and other devices are hidden from direct user control. No program can touch them directly. Windows won't allow it. But this shouldn't be a problem as it happens 'transparently'.

On the other hand, if you mean send commands to the windows API, yes, you can access the Windows API.

Or, do you mean something else. Perhaps if you could give an example I could give you a better answer.

But yes, XB can react to keyboard input, and mouse as well. It has the ability to make a GUI interface. Although, I must warn you the interface does not look exactly like windows.

For an example of two XB based programs I've written that I've made available on my website, check out,

LaserLine. This is a program to graphically display and browse a database of laser emission lines.
http://www.skywise711.com/laserline/index.html

Quake3D. This program allows one to graphically display and browse earthquake data for California in 4 dimensions (3 space, 1 time).
http://www.skywise711.com/quakes/Q3D/Q3D.html

Brian