Darren: Regarding the keyboard switching applet not working on Solaris.
>> The xmodmap interfaces are also not standard across different >> Xservers, so you can have the same sorts of problems using it >> in this mode as with using libxklavier. > > Yes, xmodmap is a problem, and it's the no. 1 reason that we don't use it on > Solaris since by default on Sparc systems using Xsun the preferred and more > consistent XKB extension is off by default. > > I think if we had Xsun enable XKB by default we could start using the existing > GNOME keyboard applets and associated code/libs if we wish. Are there any reasons why XKB isn't supported yet on Xsun? >>> I wonder if it is possible to do this in a supportable way and provide >>> an interface at least as intuitive as what Sun and Apple had years ago >>> (e.g. Solaris 7): http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/805-4123/6j3tmpc73?a=view >> I suspect it would be, but there's probably not an easy, quick solution. >> To do this properly, this would likely be a cross-consolidation project. >> Therefore, it would likely require a high enough priority to get some >> commitment from the different teams that would need to be involved. Or >> perhaps the open source community will solve this problem in the >> meantime. > > I think we have a choice - either enhance IIIM to always run and support > changing of varied layouts (many of which are already described for XKB) in > each > locale (e.g. MacBook, PC, etc.), or port the existing GNOME stack - but I > have a > feeling that this also depends on HAL work for identifying the keyboards > (based > on observations on the patches sent to the HAL mailing list for such things). I wasn't aware of the XKB option. I agree, this does sound like a possible solution. Obviously many users would find the keyboard switcher applet useful, and if we can figure out a way to make it work reasonably on Solaris (meaning something the Xserver team would agree works in a supported way), then we should support it. One difficulty is that the Xserver team seems very under-resourced, and Xsun is already in the process of EOL. It might be hard to get resources to get XKB enabled on Sparc, especially if much work is involved. It would be a good idea to get Alan Coopersmith's thoughts about this idea. Would we want to backport this sort of fix to older Solaris releases as well, since the problems affect users who run programs remotely, and many customers might have networks with older machines running Solaris 10 or earlier? Brian
