[Spice-devel] Support for non-English keyboard layouts in aSPICE and Opaque

[i iordanov]

Hi guys,

Some of you may have seen most of this in my posting on the ovirt-users
mailing list. I wanted to inform the spice-devel list separately, in order
to hear your input on the topic as it concerns SPICE directly.

I really didn't like the idea of releasing Opaque (the oVirt/RHEV VM
console Android client) into production supporting only English (QWERTY),
so I decided to implement a workaround for the existing inability to send
Unicode directly to the OS of the VMs. It's not perfect, because it
requires users to choose their layout themselves correctly, and it requires
many layouts to be supported in order to approach universal usefulness.
However, I expect that interested people will contribute keyboard layout
map files for their own layouts once I document the final format and
release the documentation with the source code.

Using this method, Opaque (and soon aSPICE) translate Unicode characters
on-device according to a layout map chosen by the user into a series of
scan codes and meta key-presses. Currently English (QWERTY), German
(QWERTZ), and French (AZERTY) are fully supported including all AltGr and
dead-key combinations.

Even though a Unicode channel may become reality in the future, this method
will allow aSPICE and Opaque to immediately support existing installations
until there is a better solution.

At this point, I think that Opaque is feature-full enough for a public
release, so I'll be concentrating on integrating the project into
bVNC/aRDP/aSPICE.

Sincerely,
iordan

-- 
The conscious mind has only one thread of execution.
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