Hi all,
I released a keyboard patch for `hot keys' and wish to bring up a discussion
topic around it. I made the following observation:
Funny/Functional Keys such as `play' and `mute' should not be
treated as normal keys. Rather than delivering a string to be
interpreted by listening applications, it is better to invoke
an action when the keys are pressed.
I am curious if y'all agree to this.
Here's my further line of thought based on this opinion:
* Not delivering strings for FunKeys means they're not visible over
/dev/console.
* This decouples traditional console apps from the FunKeys, which is good for
orthogonality:
(1) apps need not be aware of FunKeys, so no need to program bash, X, etc,
(2) the kbd_mode of the console is of no influence on FunKey performance.
* To be able to process keystrokes that are invisible to /dev/console, a
secondary keyboard device /dev/funkey is needed over which key strokes can
be transmitted to a simple daemon.
* The most logical integration in keyboard.c would be by using a new KT_xxx
value in the keytables that says `transmit byte X to /dev/funkey'.
* The code gives a hint that this way of integrating is indeed logical, by
providing shift/ctrl handling for free.
* The SysRq key is useful, but its implementation does not conform to the
rest of the keyboard code at all. By treating SysRq as a sort-of shift/meta
key, it could be possible to take it out of the kernel and put it in a
daemon. Is this considered a good idea?
For your reference, the home page of the patch is
http://home.zonnet.nl/vanrein/linux/funkey
Let me hear your thoughts! Sending it Cc. to vanrein@zonnet.nl is appreciated.
Bye,
-Rick.
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