Ideas on improving powercomputing keyboard

[Jerry Quinn]

>> "Geert" == Geert Uytterhoeven <Geert.Uytterhoeven at cs.kuleuven.ac.be> writes:

 Geert> On Tue, 27 Jul 1999, Jerry Quinn wrote:
 >> Finally, there is a comment in the code (mac_kbd.c) from Anthony Tong
 >> about emulating the PC keyboard capslock key by immediately sending caps
 >> up as soon as it's pressed.  What is going on with this and how might it
 >> relate to what I want to do?

 Geert> Mac and Amiga keyboards handle Caps Lock in the keyboard itself: the
 Geert> keyboard remembers the Caps Lock state.

 Geert> If you press Caps Lock, a `Caps Lock down' code is sent by the
 Geert> keyboard. If you release Caps Lock, nothing is sent.  If you press
 Geert> Caps Lock again, a `Caps Lock up' code is sent by the keyboard.  If
 Geert> you release Caps Lock, nothing is sent.

 Geert> PC keyboards don't behave that way: there the computer has to remember
 Geert> the Caps Lock state and the Caps Lock key behaves like any other key:
 Geert> it always sents `Caps Lock down' when you press it, and sents `Caps
 Geert> Lock up' when you release it.

 Geert> To emulate this behavior, the Mac and Amiga keyboard driver always
 Geert> feeds two codes (`Caps Lock down' followed by `Caps Lock up') to the
 Geert> upper keyboard layer through handle_scancode() when the keyboard sent
 Geert> any of `Caps Lock down' or `Caps Lock up'.

OK, I think I understand this.  So, what I'm trying to do is get a
powercomputing keyboard, which fortunately doesn't have a mechanical lock but
does have this broken 0x80 behavior to act like a PC keyboard.

It sounds like I need to disable the down/up output behavior for a
powercomputing keyboard and add the state logic I described including ignoring
the difference between the keyboard's notion of down and up.  However, this
sounds like I'm going to break other keyboards.

Is there any way to probe a keyboard and get some info out of it so that this
stuff can be detected rather than compile-time configured?

By the way, do you have any comments on whether my idea makes sense?

Jerry

-- 
Jerry Quinn                             Tel: (514) 761-8737
jquinn at nortelnetworks.com               Fax: (514) 761-8505
Speech Recognition Research


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