I'd like to add support to XFree86 for 'half-QWERTY' typing. I'm not sure whether this fits into the X keyboard scheme, because it involves use of the spacebar as a modifier to switch between a normal and left-right mirrored keyboard layout. SPACE-A, for example, should give ;, SPACE-S should give L, etc. (working in the same way as shift -- SPACE needs to be held down to get the mirrored key). HOWEVER, pressing and releasing SPACE (without combining it with any other keypresses) should just get you a space character.
The idea is that you can type with just a left hand, which is useful if, like me, your right hand is out of action (research shows that fast (75 wpm) two-handed touch-typists can get 75% or more of their two-hand speed like this, and slow two-handed touch-typists maybe 90%). There's a linux kernel patch out there, but of course that doesn't help for X. As a total XFree-hacking newbie, can anybody point me roughly in the right direction? Is it enough to somehow tell X that SPACE is a modifier key, or will that prevent space from ever outputting the space character (which it's supposed to do when it's not combined with another key)? The other issue seems to be that xmodmap says that only the first four (no-modifier, shift, control, and shift-control) key combinations are taken notice of by major X implementations. Presumably, then, the 'keycode' xmodmap expression can't be used to do the job I need, at least without patching X? And I'm not sure what the standard meanings (if any) of the other four arguments of the keycode xmodmap expression would be... Looking at xmodmap, it looks like it XChangeKeyboardMapping and XKeyboardToKeysym might be relevant, but I certainly don't understand how all this stuff works -- it all seems rather complicated & obscure! Thanks in advance for any help _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/devel
