Re: [Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[S Page]

(including fedora-olpc-list)

I think there are three Fedora XO-1 keyboard bugs:

1. Any Rawhide should auto-detect you have an OLPC keyboard.  The hal
and evdev bits and pieces are there, yet it doesn't work.  I filed
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490310>;.  I made n00b
notes at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Skierpage/Redhat-XO_OLPC_keyboard

2. Although OLPC keymap is in Rawhide, there's dispute over the exact
contents, e.g. the Frame key and brightness vs. function keys.
Existing bugs <http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/291> and
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=468744>
I'm really confused if this needs to be fixed in /usr/share/hal or in
/usr/share/X11/xkb or both.

3. OLPC keyboard variants should appear in system-config-keyboard and
the Gnome desktop manager "first boot" keyboard selector.  Only the
latter has a few Afghanistan OLPC keyboard layouts, none of them has
"U.S. English (olpc)".    I filed
<https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490311> for
system-config-keyboard, I don't know if the "first boot" GDM keyboard
selector should be a different bug.

It ought to Just Work :-) , but they've been saying that about X
keyboard handling for about 20 years.

Regarding 3, Martin Dengler made additional progress on this one in
his message.  I don't know how Fedora builds that hardcoded list of
keyboards, and I don't know where /etc/sysconfig/keyboard gets set.


Hope this helps,
--
=S Page

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2009 at 11:56 AM, S Page <skierpage(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote:
>  (including fedora-olpc-list)
>
>  I think there are three Fedora XO-1 keyboard bugs:
>
>  1. Any Rawhide should auto-detect you have an OLPC keyboard.  The hal
>  and evdev bits and pieces are there, yet it doesn't work.  I filed
>  <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490310>;.  I made n00b
>  notes at http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Skierpage/Redhat-XO_OLPC_keyboard
>
>  2. Although OLPC keymap is in Rawhide, there's dispute over the exact
>  contents, e.g. the Frame key and brightness vs. function keys.
>  Existing bugs <http://dev.sugarlabs.org/ticket/291> and
>  <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=468744>
>  I'm really confused if this needs to be fixed in /usr/share/hal or in
>  /usr/share/X11/xkb or both.
>
>  3. OLPC keyboard variants should appear in system-config-keyboard and
>  the Gnome desktop manager "first boot" keyboard selector.  Only the
>  latter has a few Afghanistan OLPC keyboard layouts, none of them has
>  "U.S. English (olpc)".    I filed
>  <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490311> for
>  system-config-keyboard, I don't know if the "first boot" GDM keyboard
>  selector should be a different bug.
>
>  It ought to Just Work :-) , but they've been saying that about X
>  keyboard handling for about 20 years.
>
>  Regarding 3, Martin Dengler made additional progress on this one in
>  his message.  I don't know how Fedora builds that hardcoded list of
>  keyboards, and I don't know where /etc/sysconfig/keyboard gets set.
>  

Hi,
(Sorry for not responding to this earlier)

We need to add a HAL fdi file for the XO so that the frame key (and a
few other keys) works. In the OLPC builds earlier, I think this was
set by setolpckeys[1]. I'm trying to come up with a HAL fdi file which
works, but for some reason, <match
key="/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer:system.hardware.vendor"
contains="OLPC"> does not seem to work (on removing that line, it
seems to work fine in the latest Soas2 image - Soas2-200903131725).
I'm not sure why this is happening (and I'm too sleepy at the moment
to investigate thoroughly).

The keyboard layout information in an XO is stored in the mfg-data -
see http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Mfg-data#Keyboards for details. In
earlier builds, the mfg-data would be read by the olpc-configure[2]
script, which would write this data to /etc/sysconfig/keyboard
The data in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard would then be read by the
olpc-session script[3], and maybe we can change
/home/liveuser/.Xclients to contain whatever that used to be in
olpc-session ?

In the long term, I believe Sugar should have its own keyboard
configuration system, based on libxkb (or maybe libxklavier), and
enable whatever keyboard(s) that is/are chosen by the user during
startup. I believe Martin has been working on a control-panel item to
make this work, and I would be glad to help with this. As Martin
points out, this is going to be a pain, since there is virtually no
way (AFAIK) to manipulate/query xkb stuff using Python - but this
feature needs to be added.

Thanks,
Sayamindu


[1] http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/olpc-utils/tree/src/setolpckeys.c
[2] http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/olpc-utils/tree/etc/rc.d/init.d/olpc-c...
[3] http://dev.laptop.org/git/projects/olpc-utils/tree/usr/bin/olpc-session

-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Martin Dengler]

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 04:26:17AM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>  [olpc set /etc/sysconfig/keyboard from OFW's data and had no UI
> for
>  keyboard configuration] 
We could just get rid of the keyboard configure GUI and have people
edit the file still (and automatically maintain it as you suggest).
The range of choices available in the config file is huge, and I'm not
sure what it really adds to give people a very limited UI.

>  In the long term, I believe Sugar should have its own keyboard
>  configuration system, based on libxkb (or maybe libxklavier), and
>  enable whatever keyboard(s) that is/are chosen by the user during
>  startup. I believe Martin has been working on a control-panel item to
>  make this work, and I would be glad to help with this. 
Please help. All the code's at
http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/sugar/repos/mtd-sugar/commits/a8b0f026f...
and forks are welcome :).  I suppose the one advantage is we won't be
worse than GNOME if we just merge it as-is, but the code's
off-the-cuff and the UI has been "designed" by me so I don't think
we'll want to do that.

>  As Martin points out, [writing our own X and console keyboard config
>  system] is going to be a pain, since there is virtually no way
>  (AFAIK) to manipulate/query xkb stuff using Python - but this
>  feature needs to be added. 
When I said "it is going to be a pain" I should've said "it would be a
sign of insanity" :) to create our own X and console keyboard
configuration system.  wish there was something "upstream" to crib
from at least.  Perhaps KDE has something?  I was quite surprised to
find absolutely nothing but rhpl's hardcoded list[1].

>  Thanks,
>  Sayamindu 
Martin

1. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=490311

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Martin Dengler
<martin(a)martindengler.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 04:26:17AM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
> > [olpc set /etc/sysconfig/keyboard from OFW's data and had no UI for
> > keyboard configuration]
>
>  We could just get rid of the keyboard configure GUI and have people
>  edit the file still (and automatically maintain it as you suggest).
>  The range of choices available in the config file is huge, and I'm not
>  sure what it really adds to give people a very limited UI.
>  
But that will work only on the XO :-).

> > In the long term, I believe Sugar should have its own keyboard
> > configuration system, based on libxkb (or maybe libxklavier), and
> > enable whatever keyboard(s) that is/are chosen by the user during
> > startup. I believe Martin has been working on a control-panel item to
> > make this work, and I would be glad to help with this.
>
>  Please help. All the code's at
>
> http://git.sugarlabs.org/projects/sugar/repos/mtd-sugar/commits/a8b0f026f...
>  and forks are welcome :).  I suppose the one advantage is we won't be
>  worse than GNOME if we just merge it as-is, but the code's
>  off-the-cuff and the UI has been "designed" by me so I don't think
>  we'll want to do that.
>  
Ok - I'll take a look.

> > As Martin points out, [writing our own X and console keyboard
> config
> > system] is going to be a pain, since there is virtually no way
> > (AFAIK) to manipulate/query xkb stuff using Python - but this
> > feature needs to be added.
>
>  When I said "it is going to be a pain" I should've said "it would be
> a
>  sign of insanity" :) to create our own X and console keyboard
>  configuration system.  wish there was something "upstream" to crib
>  from at least.  Perhaps KDE has something?  I was quite surprised to
>  find absolutely nothing but rhpl's hardcoded list[1].
>  
I'm trying to implement a very basic python module for handling XKB
stuff. It is based on libxklavier[1], and can currently show the
layouts available, as well as the variants for each layout. I will put
this into Git as soon as I have figured out how to set the XKB
configuration as well.
libxklavier is Gobject based, but the standard PyGobject wrapping
stuff (h2def, etc) did not work for me, so I decided to do a
simplified module instead, which should take care of all our
requirements for the time being.

Thanks,
Sayamindu



[1] http://freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/LibXklavier
-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Peter Robinson]

>  I'm trying to implement a very basic python module for handling
> XKB
>  stuff. It is based on libxklavier[1], and can currently show the
>  layouts available, as well as the variants for each layout. I will put
>  this into Git as soon as I have figured out how to set the XKB
>  configuration as well.
>  libxklavier is Gobject based, but the standard PyGobject wrapping
>  stuff (h2def, etc) did not work for me, so I decided to do a
>  simplified module instead, which should take care of all our
>  requirements for the time being. 
Fedora has a package called system-config-keyboard which is written in
python. Not sure if that can be of help to you.

Peter

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Jeremy Katz]

On Wednesday, March 25 2009, Peter Robinson said:
>  > I'm trying to implement a very basic python module for
> handling XKB
>  > stuff. It is based on libxklavier[1], and can currently show the
>  > layouts available, as well as the variants for each layout. I will put
>  > this into Git as soon as I have figured out how to set the XKB
>  > configuration as well.
>  > libxklavier is Gobject based, but the standard PyGobject wrapping
>  > stuff (h2def, etc) did not work for me, so I decided to do a
>  > simplified module instead, which should take care of all our
>  > requirements for the time being.
>  
>  Fedora has a package called system-config-keyboard which is written in
>  python. Not sure if that can be of help to you. 
> From someone who's had way too much to do with
> system-config-keyboard, 
I'd say it's not helpful and would warn against it. 
That said, it is
worth looking at the gnome control-center keyboard stuff -- while C
based instead of python, it's likely along a similar line of what's
trying to be done.  And sharing is better than reinventing the wheel.
Plus, that could then help with the future idea of anaconda switching to
something like that :-)

Jeremy

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Sayamindu Dasgupta]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 5:23 AM, Jeremy Katz <katzj(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote:
>  On Wednesday, March 25 2009, Peter Robinson said:
> > > I'm trying to implement a very basic python module for handling XKB
> > > stuff. It is based on libxklavier[1], and can currently show the
> > > layouts available, as well as the variants for each layout. I will put
> > > this into Git as soon as I have figured out how to set the XKB
> > > configuration as well.
> > > libxklavier is Gobject based, but the standard PyGobject wrapping
> > > stuff (h2def, etc) did not work for me, so I decided to do a
> > > simplified module instead, which should take care of all our
> > > requirements for the time being.
> >
> > Fedora has a package called system-config-keyboard which is written in
> > python. Not sure if that can be of help to you.
>
>  >From someone who's had way too much to do with system-config-keyboard, 
Ah yes, it seems to use the hardcoded list inside rhpl

>  I'd say it's not helpful and would warn against it.  That
> said, it is
>  worth looking at the gnome control-center keyboard stuff -- while C
>  based instead of python, it's likely along a similar line of what's
>  trying to be done.  And sharing is better than reinventing the wheel.
>  Plus, that could then help with the future idea of anaconda switching to
>  something like that :-)
>  
Precisely :-). I am in fact using libxklavier (which is the base XKB
manipulation lib used by the GNOME capplet and panel applet) to
implement this Python module.

Thanks,
Sayamindu

>  Jeremy
>
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>  Fedora-olpc-list mailing list
>  Fedora-olpc-list(a)redhat.com
>  https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-olpc-list
>  


-- 
Sayamindu Dasgupta
[http://sayamindu.randomink.org/ramblings]

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Martin Dengler]

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:37:59PM +0000, Peter Robinson wrote:
>  Fedora has a package called system-config-keyboard which is written
> in
>  python. Not sure if that can be of help to you. 
Thanks - indeed, that's what my code is based on.

>  Peter 
Martin

[Sugar-devel] XO-1 keyboard issues, partial setxkbmap workaround

[Martin Dengler]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 03:23:39AM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>  On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 10:10 PM, Martin Dengler
>  <martin(a)martindengler.com&gt; wrote:
>  > On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 04:26:17AM +0530, Sayamindu Dasgupta wrote:
>  >> [olpc set /etc/sysconfig/keyboard from OFW's data and had no UI for
>  >> keyboard configuration]
>  >
>  > We could just get rid of the keyboard configure GUI and have people
>  > edit the file still (and automatically maintain it as you suggest).
>  > The range of choices available in the config file is huge, and I'm not
>  > sure what it really adds to give people a very limited UI.
>  >
>  
>  But that will work only on the XO :-). 
Define "work" :).  Editing a file works everywhere.  Editing a file
that's maintained by the distribution (SoaS) works everywhere in that
distro.


>  Thanks,
>  Sayamindu 
Martin