Subject: Re: improving NetBSD
To: Ken Nakata <M.Hitter@trier.fh-rpl.de, kenn@eden.rutgers.edu>
From: Ken Nakata <kenn@eden.rutgers.edu>
List: port-mac68k
Date: 04/15/1996 19:10:59
> > I'm interested in how you added the support for international
> > keyboard.  Is it a portable way?  I mean, is it easy to add a new
> > keyboard layout to it?
> 
> It's simple. You just have to make the console recognize the Options key
> and the combination of the Options&Shift key. The rest is to add two
> columns for these combinations into the keyboard map in keyboard.h.
> Probably it's the best to make one file for each available keyboard and
> select the right one with a link.

Uhm, I'm sorry I wasn't clear enough on what I wanted (gee, I don't
think I clearly knew what I wanted).  So, here it goes:

Does your code have an interface, I mean a program interface, not a
user interface, to install/deinstall a key map on the fly?  I mean,
without having to rebuild a kernel, or even having to reboot.  I think
this is very important because then we won't have to make a "special"
kernel for everyone who wants a new key map.  And I don't like the
idea of keeping every possible key maps around in the kernel, many of
which I'll never use.  So, I think it's better to supply such an
interface (probably an ioctl() for /dev/adb) and key map definition
files for various international keyboard layouts.  And a user can
install any of those as he/she wishes, or write one if there isn't any
already written for his/her keyboard layout.

This can be done in /etc/rc.local and you can forget about it once
the system is up.  Only drawback I can think of with this scheme is
that one has to put up with the default key map until a preferred map
is manually installed when booted in the single-user mode.  But I
don't think it is too high a cost to pay for the benefit I described
above, is it?

ken