New manufacturing data flags for keyboards (2nd draft).

[Walter Bender]

I don't know about just enumerating them, but the naming scheme seems a bit
ad hoc. Even though X windows assigns kb symbol tables by country code, I
would suggest we use the language name for the keyboard itself, e.g., es,
pt, etc. with the ability to add qualifiers, such as es_AR. Also, we will
undoubtedly have many more keyboards over time. That said, the plan for
keyboards with non-Latin scripts is to also have the Latin, so at the OFW
level, that mapping will always work. The tricky one is for keyboards that
introduce variants on the Latin layout, such as Spanish and Portuguese.
These latter changes are generally pretty small, so there may be a compact
"diff" way of specifying them, saving Mitch some space.

-walter

On 10/7/07, Albert Cahalan <acahalan at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Re: New manufacturing data flags for keyboards (2nd draft).
>
> > Keyboard Layout          KM    KL      KV          Comment
> > USInternational_Keyboard olpc  us      olpc
> > OLPC_Argentina_Keyboard  olpc  es      olpc        (Spanish)
> > OLPC_Brasil_Keyboard     olpc  br      olpc        (Portuguese)
> > OLPC_Ethiopia_Keyboard   olpc  us,et   olpc2,olpc
> > OLPC_Libya_Keyboard      olpc  us,ara  olpc2,olpc  (Arabic)
> > OLPC_Nigeria_Keyboard    olpc  ng      olpc        (for West Africa)
> > OLPC_Thailand_Keyboard   olpc  us,th   olpc2,olpc
> > Urdu_Keyboard            olpc  us,ur   olpc2,olpc
> > Cyrillic_Keyboard        olpc  us,ru   olpc2,olpc
> > OLPC_Turkey_Keyboard     olpc  us,tr   olpc2,olpc
> > OLPC_Nepal_Keyboard      olpc  us,np   olpc2,olpc  (Not final)
> > Mongolian_Keyboard       olpc  us,mo   olpc2,olpc
> > Kazakhstan_Keyboard      olpc  us,kz   olpc2,olpc
>
> It seems like you could just enumerate them, 0 to 12. If key
> shapes ever change, you can add a flag at that time.
>
> Supplying mapping data would be nice as well.
>
> There needs to be a way to change this in case somebody swaps
> a keyboard or draws new characters on the keys. (something that
> would change what OpenFirmware uses, with low risk of bricking)
> Best would be something that works even with secure boot, but
> a simple OpenFirmware command would do for now.
>
> Locale needs to be separate from the keyboard, but machines
> should have nice defaults as they come from the factory.
> Default locale could go in the manufacturing data (separate
> from keyboard) or could be in the OS image. Just give it
> straight and simple: en_US.UTF8, es_AR.UTF8, etc.
>
> This looks about right:
>
> Keyboard number: manufacturing data
> Keyboard mapping data: manufacturing data
> Default locale: either manufacturing data or OS image
> Default timezone: either manufacturing data or OS image
> Radio restrictions: manufacturing data (for WLAN boot)
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-- 
Walter Bender
One Laptop per Child
http://laptop.org
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