Re: xkb handling in upcoming 4.3.0

[Shachar Shemesh]

Oron Peled wrote:

Engravings...display engine.... What?

I do believe I was not properly understood. I'll try again.

I was talking about the engravings on the plastic keycaps on the keyboard
("Hacharita al gabey hamakashim").

So was I.

It has no $&#$^#$ display engine (yet).

Dure you do. Otherwise, how come the characters come out at all? It's part of X.

Now imagine how "intuitive" it would be for the display to present
	'('
While the keycap on the keyboard is marked (on the plastic) with:
	')'

It won't be. But in order for it to come out right, and behave according to the "logical" Hebrew standard, two things must happen. The first is that the keyboard send out the "wrong" key, i.e. - I press the thing marked ")", and the keyboard sends ASCII, or rather, UNICODE 0x0028 (also known as "(", or "open paranthesis). The reason being that open paranthesis is what you meant. When in Hebrew, the open paranthesis are on the right.

Now, in order for the display to display it properly, and open paranthesis must be rendered as ")" rather than "(", as it normally does. Guess what, the Unicode standard does, in fact, dictate that character 0x0028, when in right to left context, should be displayed as the glyph that belongs to 0x0029.

After this long explanation, what do we have? We now know that we want a keyboard that does things "backwards", and a display engine that reverses this back. Believe me, there are good reasons (which I have tried to explain in my previous mail) why this is preferable to doing things as they have been done up until now.

So, if everything is so cool how come things break, you ask? Because, while the keyboard was corrected, the display engine was not yet. As a result, things turn out backwards on screen, even though they are correctly represented in memory. This will also hold true to files imported from other platforms.

So, instead of complaining about the change to the input method, complain that the output method is not yet up to date. This will make things much more productive all around.

Now that people started reversing keys, I can only extrapolate...
	- Let's map F1 <-> F12, F2 <-> F11, (RTL Function-key order)
	- Let's change '/' into '\' (RTL pathnames are great)
	- Let's change '+' into '-' (my brain has melted)

No, but it should change "<" to ">", and "[" to "]" for similar reasons.

Seriously, let's keep one simple principle:
	A key produce the character painted on its keycap.

Agreed, but that does not necessarily means it is not converted back and forth on it's way.

Sh.

--
Shachar Shemesh
Open Source integration consultant
http://www.consumer.org.il/sun/



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