I ripped some code from one of the examples, but it only works when you have one key pressed at a time, i.e.

 if (event.type == ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_CHAR) 
    {
            if (event.keyboard.keycode == ALLEGRO_KEY_ESCAPE)
                break;
            if (event.keyboard.keycode==ALLEGRO_KEY_LEFT)
                mapxoff-=MAPINCREMENT;
            if (event.keyboard.keycode==ALLEGRO_KEY_RIGHT)
                mapxoff+=MAPINCREMENT;
            if (event.keyboard.keycode==ALLEGRO_KEY_UP)
                mapyoff-=MAPINCREMENT;
            if (event.keyboard.keycode==ALLEGRO_KEY_DOWN)
                mapyoff+=MAPINCREMENT;
        }

What's the A5 route, do you use another event or is there a global key array, etc? and what's the difference between EVENT_KEY_CHAR and KEY_UP/KEY_DOWN

Thanks.

But those bypass events?

ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_CHAR is pretty much the same as using the keypressed() / readkey() interface from Allegro 4.
It automatically gets the behavior of keyboard repetition rate, so it's pretty handy behavior for applications that are like game editors.

These events are also the only good ones to get real text input: For example on French-located Windows I press:
^ key:
one ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_DOWN
no ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_CHAR
then 'a' key:
one ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_DOWN : key 'a'
one ALLEGRO_EVENT_KEY_CHAR : character 'â'

Does it handle PAUSE/BREAK?

The benefit of doing it yourself is that you are guaranteed to never miss a state change.

If you use the Allegro state, then you may miss something if you don't check often enough. Even if you check the Allegro state when you receive a KEY_DOWN event, there's no guarantee that it is in sync with the event.