Brian Cameron wrote: > 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?
No, it should be simply a change in the default - but that's an interface change. If I'm not mistaken I think the a11y people asked about this before too. > >>>> 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. I don't believe there is a large amount of work, but I could be wrong. > > 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? I think that *would* be a lot more work - and probably not worth the effort unless it's been escalated - especially if the keyboard maps have changed any. Darren.
