[iPAQ] RE: Question about kernel patches

Feel free to send patches to the ipaq list - I'm a fan of open discussion.

However, orienting the arrow keys is more of a user-level issue than a kernel issue. At the low level (medium-raw mode) the kernel reports what physical key was pressed. Changing which key is reported based on orientation isn't fair - it goes against the intent of medium-raw mode. In "cooked" mode, the kernel uses translation tables to report keysyms for pressed keys. The user can freely change these translation tables using "loadkeys". So there is no need for a kernel patch here.

The usual problem comes with your GUI. When you rotate the screen under X, you can use "xmodmap" to rearrange the arrow keys and any other keys you require.

Then we come to QPE....which has hardwired keyboard translation tables. These cause problems not only for screen rotation, but for novel keyboards that don't have the same set of keys that QPE expects (such as the HP Microkeyboard). QPE badly needs to be fixed. I'm aware of a set of bug reports that have gone into the maintainers, but I'm not sure when they are planning on addressing these issues.

I guess that's my long way of saying that unless you have a novel argument for why rotation should be handled in the kernel, I can't see why it would be a good idea to patch the kernel in this way.

        - Andrew

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Chott [mailto:verxion@yahoo.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 04, 2002 4:32 PM
> To: Christian, Andrew
> Subject: Question about kernel patches
>
>
> Andrew,
>
> I have some kernel patches I made for myself which allow the
> kernel to orient the arrow keys correctly for both the joypad
> and the various keyboard drivers (at least the ones I am aware
> of) correctly based on 3800 vs. non 3800 ipaqs.
>
> I guess what I was wondering, is this something you would
> consider a worthwhile patch? I will send them in if you
> think it would be worthwhile and not against the "proper" way
> of solving such problems. I am new to the kernel, so I
> didn't want to send the patches to the ipaq list if this was
> something that would be considered an inappropriate solution.
>
> Please advise,
>
> -Joe Chott
>
> P.S. Any news on the MMC front?
>
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