New keyboard layouts

[Benjamin M. Schwartz]

On Wed, 28 Apr 2010, Paul Fox wrote:

> part of the impetus for this keyboard is that it be more "normal", for
> use by older students, perhaps in non-sugar environments.

Sure.  I'm actually arguing that Ins and Del are no longer normal, and  
mainstream computers far more popular than the XO often don't have them.

>  > Getting rid of those keys frees up valuable space that can be used,
>  > for example to move += to the top row, replaced by ?, replaced by
>  > up-arrow.  No more hjkl.
>
> i'd far rather have as much of the punctuation in their correct places
> as possible.

I suggested this change in particular because it puts += much closer  
to its standard location.  Careful about "correct" though.  A few  
minutes on a UK keyboard may remind you that even countries with the  
same language have widely varying common layouts.

> if you watch /dev/input/eventN, where N is the right device for
> the keyboard, you'll get a KEY_FN code for the Fn key.  and if
> you use it to modify F1, you'll get KEY_FN_F1 instead of KEY_F1.

Interesting.  I don't know much about keyboard handling in X.  Maybe  
we were just mistaken, or maybe the problem is at the X layer.