Re: IBM Rapid Access Keyboard

From: Francis Galiegue (fg@mandrakesoft.com)
Date: Wed Jul 12 2000 - 09:44:29 EST


On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Dennis Bjorklund wrote:

> On Wed, 12 Jul 2000, Andries Brouwer wrote:
>
> > There is a quite large variety of keyboards these days; putting stuff
> > in the kernel is meaningless. You'll have to use the setkeycodes
> > utility to assign keycodes to these 14 keys. See also
>
> On the other hand there is a lot of keyboards but very many of them have
> the same buttons. There are usually buttons for starting programs,
> controling a cd-player and some web stuff. It would be easier if at least
> all keyboards with the same sort of keys where mapped to the same
> keycodes.
>

Not that easy, when you know that these buttons are not standardized... Packard
Bell are the worst of all, their keycodes not matching any other keyboards'.

> So you suggest I make another program that starts up the keyboard. If it's
> not in the kernel then how do I know that my program does not interfer
> with the kernel. Of course I can just send the codes to port 0x60 but that
> seems brutal.
>

I took the solution of creating a dedicated character device from which a user
space daemon can read events (note: events, not scancodes) and act upon these
events (IKB_CDPLAYPAUSE, IKB_APMSLEEP and so on), and I even got a daemon to
exploit them. Thus no need for keycodes for multimedia keys, neither for
application launcher keys (think the shitload of keys on HP OEM keyboards).
OTOH, keycodes can be set for keys dedicated to given apps, such as M$ Internet
Pro's keys for IE, or for Netscape for that matter.

The reason why none of these is public for now is that I'm still waiting for
Jeff to proofread it... When it's done I'll submit the whole stuff.

Andries, if you're interested, I got the scancodes for 7 types of keyboards.

-- 
Francis Galiegue, fg@mandrakesoft.com
"Programming is a race between programmers, who try and make more and more
idiot-proof software, and universe, which produces more and more remarkable
idiots. Until now, universe leads the race"  -- R. Cook

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