Let me try to put it this way: some machines (uClinux) have no keyboard,
others want additional keyboards (multihead graphics independent of GGI).
The serial lines seem to be a good choice. Specific serial lines are
designated as keyboard
input, and somewhere along the way from serial driver to the console code a
translation has to be performed. I'd prefer to do this in some analogue to
handle_scancode (yes, I'm aware that this means calling the tty code again,
like ttyS1 -> keycodes+state -> tty[0-5] instead of kbd -> handle_scancode
-> tty[0-5]). If there's another way (not involving EvStack) please let me
know.
It's not at all clear this kind of routing of keycodes around should be
done in the kernel --- indeed, I'll go farther, it almost certainly
*shouldn't* be done in the kernel.
There needs be basic functionality for booting a machine (the existing
serial console and VT console functionality is a pretty good limit) and
doing emergency system administration. However, supporting multiple
keyboards for GUI applications (X windows or something else) should be
done in user-mode, not in the kernel.
- Ted
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