On Wed, 2024-02-21 at 12:55 -0600, David Wright wrote: > On Tue 13 Feb 2024 at 08:09:40 (+0100), hw wrote: > > On Sun, 2024-02-11 at 10:35 -0600, David Wright wrote: > > > On Wed 07 Feb 2024 at 06:58:39 (+0100), hw wrote: > > > > [...] > > I'd use multiple keyboards if I had to do that and just change between > > keyboards. > > Do it if you like. That's what I have on my computer in the basement: > a GB-layout M keyboard and a US-layout Microsoft Pro.
And is their layout identical? If isn't, do all the keys on both keyboards what you expect them to do? > In my case, the layout difference is incidental: the M sits on the > table, the other sits on a shelf, for standing use. (There are two > screens, set to mirroring.) > > > > > > My 2014 keyboard appears to identify itself correctly as a K520. My > > > > > old IBM M says it's an "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard", which seems > > > > > reasonable for a keyboard dating from 1988. > > > > > > > > I can see USB keyboards identifying themselves, but keyboards with > > > > PS/2 or DIN connectors? How does your keyboard from 1988 connect? > > > > > > PS/2. IIRC it came with a genuine IBM PS/2 computer. > > > > Where does it show up? Where does the information originate from? > > Perhaps the information is merely an assumption some of the involved > > the software makes and not something the keyboard tells it. > > I get it from xinput, which I assume gets it from udev, as the ID's > description string occurs in /lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb. Does that mean it doesn't come form the keyboard itself? > > > > 10% more keys isn't considerably more. Can you show me a keyboard > > > > with 122 keys that has all keys usable and unique rather than sending > > > > key combinations instead? > > > > > > That would be difficult: > > I think some etiquette might be appropriate. You shouldn't quote half > a sentence just to change the meaning to suit yourself. I wrote: I have no intention of doing something like that. > "That would be difficult: I've never had a 122 key keyboard, or > even seen one. You have one. In terms of xev output, are there > duplicate keys?" > > That difficulty has nothing to do with the one you wrote about here: > > > That's what I've been saying :) Years ago I read an article about > > keyboards and it said that due to hardware restrictions, only so many > > keys can be handled so that keyboards with 122 keys don't really work: > > Either the controller in the keyboard key combinations, or the keys do > > nothing. Apparently such keyboards seem to come from terminals that > > could use all the keys while PC hardware can not. > > I've not heard of that. The keyboard files in the kernel source and in > udev seem to have far more keys available than 122. Perhaps what I have been reading wasn't true, or things have changed and it is now possible to have more keys. It was sufficiently long ago for things to have been changed. But then, how many manufacturers nowadays make keyboards with 122 keys like these terminal keyboards for PCs? The only one I know of is Unicomp, and they have adjusted the keyboard controller to deliver substitutes for keys PCs don't know (or usually don't have) in order to make the keyobard usable for PCs. Why would the kernel developers make provisions for keyboards that don't exist (for PCs)? > > > I've never had a 122 key keyboard, or even seen one. You have > > > one. In terms of xev output, are there duplicate keys? Which ones, > > > and how does xev identify them? > > > > I don't know if there are duplicate keys. I didn't try out all the > > key to find any, and I haven't noticed any. > > It can't take that long to press 122 keys in turn, can it. > > > When I press F18, for example, wev says: [ … lengthy output snipped … ] > > Does wl signify wayland output? I can't decode it. However, you appear > to have your NumLock on, which could change things considerably. You mean wev? What are trying to decode? I usually NumLock enabled; if it's ever turned off, it's usually only by accidident. > > For the backtab key it says: > > Looking at 911QQZnUFrL.jpg, I don't know which key that is. But again, > NumLock appears to be on. It's the key to the left to the Delete key which is below the key labeled Dup/Insert. > > These keys don't exist on PCs, so the keyboards converts them. IIRC, > > Unicomp used to have a version that was suited for terminals like IBM > > made them, i. e. with all 122 keys working and not converted. > > That's odd—911QQZnUFrL.jpg shows function keys as high as F24. > Why would it not be able to send a keycode for F18? It's because PCs have no more than 12 function keys. Maybe they can have more nowadays, but where do you find a keyboard for PCs that has more than 12 "true" function keys? > > > The keyboards I have access to all send usable keycodes, even where > > > the engravings are the same, eg, Return/36 and KP_Enter/104 are both > > > engraved with "Enter", KP_Subtract/82 and minus/20 are both engraved > > > with "-". > > > > I get usable keycodes, too. It looks pretty much like this, only the > > symbols on the two keys in the bottom row on the very left look nicer > > on mine: https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/911QQZnUFrL.jpg > > But without shifts, locks, and key redefinitions, do all your keys > produce unique keycodes? (Whether the last point is possible might > depend on how wayland inserts itself into the process.) Also note that > when keys have been redefined, you can't see what keycodes they would > originally have produced. I don't know if all keys produce unique keycodes. Wayland plays a role that pressing the Ctrl key works correctly in a Gnome session while it does not in an X11 session. With KDE, I think it works both with Wayland and X11, but KDE with Wayland is still too unstable to use. (I'm currently using KDE after I was pissed by the file manager in Gnome which has become too much dumbed down to be usable, and there's no good replacement. So I thought I'd give KDE a try and found that it now works much faster than it did when I tried it last time, especially with Wayland. I only switched to Gnome because KDE was so buggy and didn't work with Wayland at all back then.) > > > The only key on this K520 that doesn't send a keycode on its own is > > > the gold FN key, which behaves more like a laptop's Fn key, sending > > > "control functions" like Sleep; plus a battery charge indicator. > > > > I guess that's useful for laptops --- and one example of how it's > > great to have more keys. Why is there still no 'Hibernate' key on > > every keyboard? That's not only useful laptops ... I could use like > > F20 for it if I could configure that, but unfortunately, my > > workstation doesn't really hibernate, so I haven't tried. > > This AiO desktop computer, with a wireless keyboard, obeys FN-F11 > (engraved ⏻ with PC underneath) happily, and promptly falls asleep. Such a Fn key is for laptops; I don't want one on a normal keyboard. And I was talking about actual keys we should have more of, not yet another way (or layer) to modify what the existing keys do. If you remember the ZX Spectrum, you may also remember how it was infamous for having all kinds of things on every key, and some modifier keys to summon all the stuff that was on the keys. People didn't like it back then and probably wouldn't like now even less. > > > > > > We're still trying to figure out keyboards manually. Instead of > > > > > > improvements, we now have come so far that we even can't do that at > > > > > > all now. > > > > > > > > > > I'm guessing that criticism is specific to wayland. > > > > > > > > No, it's about keyboards and computers. > > > > > > Well excuse me. You did say earlier that you were talking about > > > wayland all the time. Now, without indication, you're talking about > > > all keyboards and computers. How are we meant to keep up? > > > > By reading, applying your intelligence and by understanding? > > Because my intelligence and understanding enable me to configure > my keyboards as I want them, I can't understand why you wrote the > first three lines in that block quoted above. It doesn't match > my experience. So you figured out how to change the keyboard layout with Wayland. > > I was particularly interested in changing the keyboard layout for > > wayland because that was an unsolved problem. That doesn't mean that > > the things I pointed out are specific to wayland. Perhaps that's not > > obvious when you're always using an US keyboard and never feel a need > > to change the layout. Like I said before, all the developers must be > > Americans which may explain how keyboard configuration is still such a > > big problem. > > So now we're back to wayland. I'm afraid I don't use wayland, and know > next to nothing about it. So you can't really configure your keyboards once you use wayland. > But I don't always use a US keyboard: I use two or three GB keyboards too. Well, a German keyboard is quite different from those. > > Just see the example above with multiple keyboards connected at the > > same time. If my desk were larger, it would make sense for me to have > > both a German and an US keyboard connected at the same time, each with > > their own layout. So how the hell would you do that with Gnome? > > No idea: I've never used gnome. Well, what would you do if you had two different keyboards connected at the same time, one US or GB one, and a German one? Or you could have three, US, GB and DE. With Gnome or KDE, I'd expect to be able to configure each keyboard differently through the settings of Gnome or KDE. But Gnome doesn't allow me to do that. I haven't tried it with KDE. And without Gnome and KDE? How do you configure them? > > How do you disable NumLock completely? I mean that function, not even > > the key. I want it to be always on unless I change that myself. > > I guess you'd just use xmodmap to define the scancode to do nothing. There's no xmodmap with Wayland. I'm not sure if you can do it with xmodmap. I doubt you can. > > For passwords it's outright dumb. You can't see what you're typing > > and you have no way of knowing what keyboard layout is in use. > > Perhaps check your layout by typing characters at the login prompt, > then rub them all out, and continue with your login. There are sometimes situations where that isn't feasible, like BIOS paswords or passwords to permit access to encrypted file systems you need to enter during boot. And we shouldn't have issues like that in the first place. Nowadays it's not too much to expect that a computer can identify a keyboard and make it so that all the keys do what can be expected, without/before any extra configuration. After all, what do we have USB for? > > > I don't use Gnome. I have /e/d/keyboard set up so that I can switch > > > layouts, but I actually set them automatically in .xsession,¹ in > > > the same way as I configure mice buttons and motions, trackpad > > > tapping/scrolling behaviour, and so on. Each device is configured > > > individually. > > > > Each keyboard, too? > > Yes, that way my keyboards will work correctly wherever they're > plugged, as I have a mixture US- and GB-origin laptops and keyboards. Nice --- that's sure a feature missing in Gnome. > > > When I type Shift-3 on the IBM, it types £; on the Internet Pro it > > > types #, just as indicated on their keycaps. Similarly with ¬ and ~ > > > on the key to the left of 1, when shifted. The extra key that GB > > > keyboards have, \|, is left of Z, and the position of one other key > > > is moved, allowing for a tall Return key instead of a wide one. > > > > Is that because you configured it so, or does it happen without extra > > configuration? > > It's in the script that was mentioned in the footnote, where the > Id for the keyboard etc comes from the aforementioned xinput command, > which lists all the devices connected. Isn't that something that should happen automatically? > > The key left of Z is usually T. See what I mean? > > Not really, no. But now you've revealed your keyboard looks like > 911QQZnUFrL.jpg, I can tell you that the extra GB key is the one > that's unengraved, and it's still left of Z, as I wrote. For the pound sign? If I needed a pound sign, that would be a nice place put it via keyd. > > On my keyboard the keycap is, strangely, blank, and it types < or > > > I remember using a keyboard that had such a key, but I can't recall > which: it was decades ago. But what was most unusual about that > keyboard was the comma and fullstop keys were the same when shifted. > (More conventional would have been ; and :, as in some continental > layouts.) It was great for typing reference lists in scientific papers. Perhaps that was a misconfiguration? I guess most languages have : and ;, and computers do need those keys. > > > You were asking me to refute something that Fedora is alleged to have > > > said, without actually showing anywhere that they said it. > > > > You can use a search engine as well as I can. For example: > > Why should I search for you? I don't need to search, I've already done it. > > https://blog.nicco.love/gnome-is-gradually-dropping-x11/ > > I'm not really concerned with Gnome—I'm not a DE-user. > > > https://pagure.io/fedora-workstation/issue/395 > > I don't see any timeframe mapped out there, and don't see how it > supports your view. I'm sure you can find more information when you look for it. > > > > > > I'm sure others will follow. It's only that an up to it's date > > > > > > Debian > > > > > > is already outdated so badly that you can't even get an AMD graphics > > > > > > card to work which was released a year ago. Maybe that's why Debian > > > > > > users haven't noticed yet. > > > I don't see why or how facts would insult anyone. > > "So badly" is not a fact, and neither is "Debian users haven't noticed yet" 'So badly' is a fact. What haven't they not noticed yet? > > Experience is not opinion. > > /Your/ experience is what forms your opinions, which you now call > "facts". No, you're confusing experience, opinion and facts. > Others may have had different experiences and hold different opinions. > I certainly do. That's not my problem. You can always verify that at the time I tried to get an AMD graphics card with a freshly installed Debian did not work despite that card had come out already about a year ago and the Debian installation was up to date. That same card worked fine with Fedora out of the box. It is a fact that Debian was too old. It doesn't matter what you believe or what your opinion are, they don't change the facts. > > I'm not insulting anyone. If I did insult someone, I'd have reason > > to, and that someone would probably know. > > > > Of course you may feel insulted by facts and/or experience, but don't > > blame me for it. > > > > Besides, there is no such thing as 'social media'; what you're > > referring to is commercial media, and I don't have anything to do with > > that. You're free to believe whatever you want. > I think the first two paragraphs support my view. As for the third: > > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media That only shows that wikipedia has fallen for the misunderstanding that 'social media' is not social but commercial. I might even go so far as to say that it is not only commercial but anti-social, but that might require more research I have no interest in doing.
