[Sugar-devel] behaviour of F-keys on XO HS

[Paul Fox]

daniel wrote:
 > On 15 July 2010 18:26, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
 > > Presumably there is a way to detect which keyboard is installed in the
 > > machine? While I love Gonzalo's use of the F5-F8 keys, the need for
 > > Frame and Journal keys on the non-membrane keyboards is more important
 > > in my experience.
 > 
 > Yes, let's limit this discussion to the non-membrane keyboard. Not
 > planning any changes in the membrane keyboard (without separate
 > discussion).
 > Walter, what's your opinion?

i guess i don't understand why the question is "either/or".  as
i've coded it (so color me biased :-), when running gnome (or
anything "not sugar"), all of the function keys are available to
applications.  only four of the keys with special labels on them
have any meaning in gnome (i.e., the four brightness/volume keys)
and those are available with the Fn key.  i think everyone (except
apple, i'm learning tonight) agrees this is the correct setup
when not in sugar.

when in sugar (assuming a small patch to sugar, which could
presumably be made XO-dependent) all of the "specially" labeled
keys are available without an Fn modifier, and as such act just
as they do on the membrane keyboard.  this includes the
brightness/volume keys.  this felt both more compatible and
"discoverable" to me, and to cjb, but this laptop is for an older
audience, so maybe that doesn't matter.  in addition, the brightness
and volume keys are available with Fn.  for more uniformity, the
rest of the special-labeled F1-F6 could be made available in
sugar with Fn as well, with a bit more udev keybinding.

as far as i understood, sugar doesn't make much use of the
function keys above F1-F4, so i didn't think there was a need to
keep them all clear.  am i wrong about this?  my limited sugar use
has been on XO laptops -- i don't have much experience with SoaS.

paul
=---------------------
 paul fox, pgf at laptop.org