xorg 7.4 keyboard localisation (xorg.conf vs hal)

[Garrett Cooper]

On Sun, Feb 1, 2009 at 5:57 PM, Robert Noland <rnoland at freebsd.org> wrote:
> On Sun, 2009-02-01 at 14:10 -0800, Joe Kelsey wrote:
>> Sebastien Chassot wrote:
>> > On Sun, 2009-02-01 at 17:19 +0000, Daniel Bye wrote:
>> >
>> >> On Sun, Feb 01, 2009 at 05:42:39PM +0100, Sebastien Chassot wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> Hi,
>> >>>
>> >>> I've upgrade to xorg7.4 and apparently keyboard and mouse are now
>> >>> working with hald.
>> >>>
>> >>> In xorg.conf changing "old" keybord config as no effect and I can't find
>> >>> how change it with hal. I've got  /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/* but no
>> >>> *keymap* and I don't know how build such a file.
>> >>>
>> >> This should get you started:
>> >>
>> >> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
>> >> <deviceinfo version="0.2">
>> >>   <device>
>> >>     <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
>> >>       <merge key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">gb</merge>
>> >>     </match>
>> >>   </device>
>> >> </deviceinfo>
>> >>
>> >> Change the `gb' in the example to your local keymap name, save the file
>> >> as /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy/x11-input.fdi and restart hald.
>> >>
>> This seems to have a way to enable HAL to detect a keyboard and export
>> it to X, but what about mice?  My Xorg log tells me that it is ignoring
>> my USB mouse in addition to ignoring my keyboard, so what sort of HAL
>> file do I add to enable it to find my mouse?
>
> The above is only to set keyboard layout, everything to detect the
> keyboard is already present.
>
>> Where in HAL documentation is this information found?  R. Noland seemed
>> to think it was a trivial process to make HAL do keyboards and mice?  In
>> fact it is not trivial but a pain in the ass!  If you intend to inflict
>> broken software on unsuspecting users you had better think through all
>> of the problems and come up with explicit solutions to all of those
>> problems so that everyone has a chance to make their systems work.
>
> We (marcus and I) have gone to great pains to try and ensure that hal
> behaves correctly in pretty much all mice configurations with or without
> sysmouse.  If you don't want to use hal, set AutoAddDevices off and
> configure away.
>
>> There had better not be any more surprises waiting in the X 1.6 wings to
>> surprise and confound everyone again!
>
> Are you going to stop paying me?  You have no idea how many combinations
> of hardware and configurations for X  exist, or the amount of wok that
> goes into making all of those combinations work.
>
> robert.

    I agree. If you really want to help Robert out, contribute funds
and hardware for the time and effort he puts in, or volunteer in other
areas that might make his life otherwise easier so he can help you
out. Otherwise you're asking something extremely unreasonable that
he's volunteering to work on.
    Or as the old adages go:
    1. You get what you pay for.
    2. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.
My 2 cents,
-Garrett