Re: [RFC] Different keyborad layouts

[Robert Millan]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 09:26:58PM +0300, Vesa Jääskeläinen wrote:
> 
> Remember that in some keyboard you need to press combos in order to
> generate some character. Like in Finnish keyboard you press alt-gr + e
> in order to generate euro sign (or alt-gr + 5). Also there are
> multi-keypress sequences like in order to make '^' this sign you have to
> press ctrl + '^' button and when released then press space. If you
> happen to press in example 'a' after ctrl + '^' key you get 'â'. And I
> do not think this is the only keyboard with this feature. Also there is
> those dec input sequences like alt+number sequence. In example alt
> (pressed) + '6', '5' you get 'A'.

Do we really want to support all keys (and therefore all minor keyboard
variants) out there, or just those needed for metacharacters like '/' and
such?

> I do not like the idea of using variable for this as it will most likely
> require loading of keymap definition form disk. So I would prefer something:
> 
> insmod keymap
> keymap /boot/grub/keyboard/fi

Seems fine to me.  Note, however, that with the information currently exported
by e.g. at_keyboard.c it isn't possible to tell when special combinations like
"alt-gr + 5" were pressed.

There's quite a bit of pending rework for the input/output split (handlers?)
and USB keyboards (multiple input sources).  Perhaps it'd be better to address
this when the fundamentals have been laid out?

Btw, what happened to the handlers patch?  I thought it was about to be merged.

-- 
Robert Millan

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