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Why do you want to put smart features into a keyboard if your PC is able to do that with around 0,0001% of cpu capacity? Smart keyboards would need special hard

by progman 12y ago

Why do you want to put smart features into a keyboard if your PC is able to do that with around 0,0001% of cpu capacity? Smart keyboards would need special hardware and firmware updates, and this would make them more expensive. Nobody is forced to use cryptic key combinations like the Emacs defaults. I use Emacs for about 30 years, and I figured out quickly how I can define my own keyboard mapping, even for function keys and other special keys. Emacs has always been more convenient to me than any other editor. The same counts for terminals. Keyboard macros or shell scripts are your friend if your desktop supports them. If you know how to handle xmodmap then you can redefine even your whole keyboard which also affects every terminal. For instance I remapped the "/" key with xmodmap so that I don't have to use the shift key anymore, in any terminal. However I don't know if xmodmap is able to handle multiple key strokes. If not then this would be a nice to have feature for a coming release. In my opinion terminals are still one of the most productive features of a computer. Usually we don't use multiple different terminals at the same time. Usually we have one favorite terminal, and that's why custom keyboard macros and mappings are (or should be) sufficient. I think you actually don't want a smart keyboard. You want an intermediate layer that translates your special key mapping into control sequences of arbitrary terminals, don't you?

seszett 12y ago
> I think you actually don't want a smart keyboard. You want an intermediate layer that translates your special key mapping into control sequences of arbitrary terminals, don't you? I'm not sure about him. But for my part, I would love not having to fidget with X configuration, or Windows keyboard layout dialogues to track down which is the right layout whenever I plug a USB French AZERTY keyboard into my laptop with a Canadian multilingual QWERTY builtin keyboard. And it would be the best if I could use both keyboards at the same time, because unless I mess around manually with input device selectors everytime I plug a new keyboard, my hardware has no way to know its layout. And that's when I plug a French Mac AZERTY keyboard, and notice that some keys aren't at the same place and I once again need to find the appropriate layout. Really, sending typed characters as UTF8 strings would be far preferable, and it wouldn't require processing power on the part of the keyboard (the keyboard would just send the strings, not parse them).
- progman 12y ago
  > Really, sending typed characters as UTF8 strings would be far preferable, and it wouldn't require processing power on the part of the keyboard (the keyboard would just send the strings, not parse them). This is not a keyboard problem but simply a driver problem. Usually USB devices transmit a USB ID to the PC so that the PC can handle them appropriately. So if we simply had a customizable layer between USB keyboards and the application layer then your problem would be solved. If the layer knows the USB ID of your keyboard then it could choose the correct driver automatically so that you wouldn't have to worry about your french keyboard.
  - seszett 12y ago
    But why need such a layer when the keyboard could easily handle it itself? Each USB keyboard would need its own special driver to be installed on the system? Or would you have instead a large list of USB IDs and associated layouts? With some separate mechanism to allow custom layouts, or something. What's the problem with the keyboard knowing its own keys and just telling the symbol of the key that is pressed? Sure, it would still need some sort of escape sequence, or a way to mark whether a key's string is literal like Ù or symbolic like AltGr, but that doesn't sound too difficult. It would also make it less difficult to add a new symbol like € to keyboards.
    - lloeki 12y ago
      > What's the problem with the keyboard knowing its own keys and just telling the symbol of the key that is pressed? Physical position, for which key codes are mostly† correct. Think ZQSD vs WASD. † for interesting definitions of "mostly"

by progman 12y ago

seszett 12y ago

> I think you actually don't want a smart keyboard. You want an intermediate layer that translates your special key mapping into control sequences of arbitrary terminals, don't you? I'm not sure about him. But for my part, I would love not having to fidget with X configuration, or Windows keyboard layout dialogues to track down which is the right layout whenever I plug a USB French AZERTY keyboard into my laptop with a Canadian multilingual QWERTY builtin keyboard. And it would be the best if I could use both keyboards at the same time, because unless I mess around manually with input device selectors everytime I plug a new keyboard, my hardware has no way to know its layout. And that's when I plug a French Mac AZERTY keyboard, and notice that some keys aren't at the same place and I once again need to find the appropriate layout. Really, sending typed characters as UTF8 strings would be far preferable, and it wouldn't require processing power on the part of the keyboard (the keyboard would just send the strings, not parse them).

progman 12y ago
> Really, sending typed characters as UTF8 strings would be far preferable, and it wouldn't require processing power on the part of the keyboard (the keyboard would just send the strings, not parse them). This is not a keyboard problem but simply a driver problem. Usually USB devices transmit a USB ID to the PC so that the PC can handle them appropriately. So if we simply had a customizable layer between USB keyboards and the application layer then your problem would be solved. If the layer knows the USB ID of your keyboard then it could choose the correct driver automatically so that you wouldn't have to worry about your french keyboard.
- seszett 12y ago
  But why need such a layer when the keyboard could easily handle it itself? Each USB keyboard would need its own special driver to be installed on the system? Or would you have instead a large list of USB IDs and associated layouts? With some separate mechanism to allow custom layouts, or something. What's the problem with the keyboard knowing its own keys and just telling the symbol of the key that is pressed? Sure, it would still need some sort of escape sequence, or a way to mark whether a key's string is literal like Ù or symbolic like AltGr, but that doesn't sound too difficult. It would also make it less difficult to add a new symbol like € to keyboards.
  - lloeki 12y ago
    > What's the problem with the keyboard knowing its own keys and just telling the symbol of the key that is pressed? Physical position, for which key codes are mostly† correct. Think ZQSD vs WASD. † for interesting definitions of "mostly"