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SubjectRe: Mark keyboard RAW mode deprecated

> From: Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>
> Date: Wed, 24 Nov 1999 11:49:39 +0100
> To: Jim Gettys <jg@pa.dec.com>
> Cc: Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com>,
> "David S. Miller" <davem@redhat.com>, linux-kernel@vger.rutgers.edu
> Subject: Re: Mark keyboard RAW mode deprecated
> -----
> Hi!
>
> > Whether X can be taught about new keycodes is entirely up to the
> > operating system and X implementation: there are systems on which
> > the operating system is queried when the X server starts to get the
> > keycodes existing on the keyboard, and the keysyms on the keys that
> > are reported; the same X server may support VERY different keyboards
> > (e.g. Digital UNIX X servers are happy to handle both PC style keyboards
> > and the older Digital proprietary LK201 derived keyboards). In
> > the Digital UNIX case, I can introduce a completely different keyboard
> > without having to touch a line of code in the X server (by setting
> > up proper modules and tables in the device driver for the keyboard).
>
> Really? Even keyboards that use e0 48 for up arrow when numlock
> led is on and e0 2a e0 48 when numlock is off?
>

Yup: in the DU case, I hid all this sort of mess in the device driver.
Putting such messes in the device driver makes a certain amount of sense,
as you have to have something to get the system off the ground in the
first place to interface with fully cooked terminal drivers. I don't
know how braindead pc keyboards are, but guarantee that Digital was able
to have some pretty wierd keyboards (not as bad as some I heard of in the
industry 10 years ago: some were completely incapable of doing both
down and up events, and there was opposition to this requirement by
X's design; most apps don't care, but a few care alot, so some people
just plain got to lose for certain apps.).

This could be done differently without device driver changes, by a different
implementation of the OS specific section of the X server. The X server
internal design is quite good at such things: we had to support a ton
of different operating systems/keyboards/displays. XFree86 4.0 goes
to a modular server at long last: I dunno if the OS interface piece is
a module or not, however. And some more work will be needed in this
area to deal with USB properly.

--
Jim Gettys
Technology and Corporate Development
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg@pa.dec.com


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