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

[Jim Gettys]

On Sun, 2007-10-07 at 00:35 -0400, Albert Cahalan 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.

An enumeration is ad-hoc, and then you have to maintain a table
mapping the enumeration to the X keyboard extension names.

This would require updating the distribution to update such a mapping,
rather than being able to leverage the much larger number of layouts
already in the Xkb database.  With this scheme, we can introduce a new
layout at best, with no work at all, and at worst, by adding the
necessary xkb layout information.

> 
> Supplying mapping data would be nice as well.

I don't know what you mean by mapping...  Do you mean the data Xkb uses
to take keycodes and map them to characters?

> 
> 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.

Sure; though we'll have to be able to unlock the firmware, something we
have to be able to do in repair depots at times.

In any case, your xorg.conf can still override any defaults.  What I
want is a system which "just works" in the default case without being
forced to mess with configuration files, as we do today.

> 
> 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.

Yeah, probably the best we can do.  We'll still have to ask people to
select default language at first startup (or set it), as countries
which may be sharing the same keyboard may be using many different
languages.  At most LANG can be a "hint" of the most likely correct.
> 
> 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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-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child