Re: UTF-8 keyboard mode

[kaih@khms.westfalen.de (Kai Henningsen)]

Andries.Brouwer@cwi.nl  wrote on 18.09.99 in <UTC199909180142.DAA21510.aeb@papegaai.cwi.nl>:

> >From kaih: Mac example.
>
> Yes. For us this would be a bit more complicated, because people
> really use the power of the keyboard handler.
> Any key can be a modifier key, and people use for example F12
> to switch between a dvorak and a qwerty layout by loading
> a large keymap where F12 is a locking shift.
> Similar things are done by Greeks, Russians etc to switch between
> character sets.

I don't see why that would create any problem. The kernel knows what a  
modifier key is, right? IIRC, it already has a bitmap-type interface via  
IOCTLs.

> I thought of having /dev/kbd with packets for the past 256 keystrokes
> or so, where these packets are thrown away if no-one reads them.
> You really want these bytes in the normal input stream?

That's the only way it'll work over a telnet connection.

> Sounds like a new keyboard state, and again difficult to get out of
> if this program that understands the stream crashes.

You could define a key sequence that restores the keyboard to normal mode.  
Something like Alt-SysReq-R ... uh, we already have that one.

MfG Kai
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Linux-UTF8:   i18n of Linux on all levels
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