Re: Keyboard handling on non-x86

Hello,

> Ideally it should automatically determine when "wscons" mode is
> needed.

Ok, on NetBSD that would be always, none of the pre-wscons ports runs
XFree as far as I can tell. So - some ( like x86 ) might not exactly
/need/ it but they /should/ use it.

> This would be easier to do via the modular XFree86 "keyboard" driver
> than with the built-in "kbd" driver.  See more below.

Yeah, I finally found it - looks MUCH more sane than what I've been
ranting about yesterday. In fact I got it to work pretty well now and I
have a few questions.

> I would suggest following this up via the modular "keyboard" driver.
> Like the mouse driver, it consists of two components: a
> platform-independent input driver module in xfree86/input/keyboard/,
> and an OS-specific portion in xfree86/os-support/platform/.  The
> interface between the two should make it possible to avoid forcing all
> keyboard models into the AT-style mould. 

That's what I'm doing now. When I find a Sun keyboard I simply change
the default xkb settings to rules=sun and model=type4 or type5. Works
pretty well when I disable scancode remapping ( it's still in the
driver... ) - then even the Sun-specific keys work and it can still be
overridden via XF86Config.

> Also, as with the mouse driver, it should be able to automatically
> determine which is the best device/protocol mode to use at run-time.

Agreed.

> If you find any issues with the keyboard driver or the interface
> between the platform-specific and platform-independent components of
> it, this is the place to discuss and resolve them.

What I'm doing right now is to make the keyboard driver use xkb for
scancode->keysym translation, at least for Sun keyboards. This allows
all keys to work and avoids all these AT-scancode quirks. To do that I
leave both the remap function and the scancode translation table at
NULL and set the XKB keymap according to what wskbd tells me about the
keyboard ( sun type4 or sun type 5 ). The wscons support code there has
numerous issues:
- it didn't know about WSKBD_TYPE_SUN5 so initially it tried to use
AT-style scancode translation.
- the mapping between XLEDs and wscons ioctls is wrong. The reason seems
to be the sun keymap which says:

    indicator 4 = "Caps Lock";
    indicator 3 = "Compose";
    indicator 2 = "Scroll Lock";
    indicator 1 = "Num Lock";

... while XFree's map says:

    indicator 1 = "Caps Lock";
    indicator 2 = "Num Lock";
    indicator 3 = "Scroll Lock";

the latter seems to be hard-coded into the driver. 

The driver still attempts to translate everything into AT scancodes
which is a Bad Thing in my opinion, I think the main reason is to catch
special keystrokes like ctrl-alt-backspace before xkb does. Is this
really necessary? Shouldn't xkb handle them correctly?
Wouldn't it be better to select a sane xkb map instead of attempting to
make everything fit a PC keymap?

have fun
Michael

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