Re: Tablet PC support

On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 [email protected] wrote:

> My hardware is a rugged Tablet Pc which I use for navigation,
> communication control and other functions at sea and as a mobile computer
> when in port. I would like to be able to run an **ix OS on this hardware.
> This Tablet is manufactured by Itronix (called a GoBook but not to be
> confused with the pda of the same name) It uses a 933Mhz Pentium. While
> installation can be accomplished with a conventional keyboard subsequent
> text input would normally be via virtual keyboard (or voice commands).
> This would mean login via an X interface. Ideally for both single and
> multi-user purposes.I recognize that providing an X interface for single
> user might present some challenges.
> 
> Has anyone successfully installed Xfree on this on any other Tablet system
> and been able to boot and login without a USB keyboard? My preferred OS is
> freebsd or linux.

If you configure a serial console in the kernel, the machine will 
boot without a keyboard.
I've never tried it, so don't know what X will do with only a
serial console to run on, but a "-novt" option was added to XFree86
in v4.5, which might help.

You can use the "void" input driver, so that the X server runs without
a keyboard (or mouse):
    Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "noKeyboard"
        Driver      "void"
        Option  "SendCoreEvents" "true"
    EndSection
    Section "ServerLayout"
        Identifier "test"
        InputDevice     "noKeyboard"    "CoreKeyboard"
	...			...
    EndSection

I'm assuming you have a touch screen input driver, but if not your
virtual keyboard could use the X-test extension to get the input 
into X (like the x2x app).