Auto key repeat in wayland.

[Yichao Yu]

Hi Scott,

On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 8:51 PM, Scott Moreau <oreaus at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Mar 17, 2013 at 5:36 PM, Yichao Yu <yyc1992 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Seems that weston uses a client side keyboard auto-repeat that is
>> HARD-CODED in `window.c` and I haven't seen anywhere in wayland's
>> mentioning how this should be done in wayland. There doesn't seem to
>> be a place where the client can get a recommended repeat delay and
>> frequency from the server either. Does it mean each program/toolkit
>> will then have it's own key repeat setting or even hard coded in the
>> code that cannot be change without a recompiling (and in either case
>> it is not possible to set it globally anymore)???
>>
>> Why can't this be done in the server or shouldn't a least a
>> recommended value that can also be set from client be added?
>>
>> Yichao Yu
>
> Hi Yichao,
>
> I have asked about this several months ago and the decision was made

This one[1]?

> by wayland developers that each toolkit should implement this feature
> if they would like to have it. My position is that the key repeat

And the decision was all toolkits/programs written without using a
toolkit ALL need to "agree on where to retrieve that (key repeat
configuration) from"??? Shouldn't that "where" be the compositor??

> events should originate from compositor side. Not only would this give
> this expected behavior of a consistent key repeat timing and always be
> available by default, but it would let us have things such as key
> repeat for key bindings in the compositor. Martin also expressed that
> even the Linux kernel has key repeat functionality. Here is a quote
> from Martin on IRC:
>
> <min2_> there is a key repeat functionality in kernel btw, no need to
> recreate in toytoolkit
>
> There's no reason this should be a client-side implementation. It is
> hard to get wrong in a single implementation but having a desktop with

At least clutter and weston both have a hard coded key-repeat setting
(and seems to be different....), which IMHO is "get wrong"......

> each client supporting it differently or not at all is just
> ridiculous. The sheer code and effort duplication that would be
> required is entirely unacceptable. I don't think this is an option, I
> think this is a requirement of any sane display server for a desktop
> platform.

So is the patch just disappear in nowhere? IMHO, it will also be very
useful to make it possible for a client to change that setting
(instead of a hard coded value in the compositor or a value in a
configure file that require a restart to take effect).

OT: That patch seems to have a set of hard coded non-repeat keys.
Isn't this setting (which key should be repeat) part of xkb? (Anyway,
since the X server can figure that out from keyboard layout, whatever
backend wayland use shouldn't have any problem on that.....)

Yichao Yu.

>
> - Scott

[1] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2012-March/002511.html