spec on "multimedia buttons"

[Rodney Dawes]

A lack of good hardware detection and keyboard configuration at the
system level doesn't really make me think we should write a new "spec"
for multimedia button configuration. X has support for these. If you
think configuring a single keyboard with media keys is hard... try to
set up multiple keyboards (like say, for when you dock your laptop) or
something... and then pull in the multiple-architecture issue. Trying to
make a PC keyboard work like a Mac keyboard is not fun. :) Maybe we
should try to get those distributions that do have semi-good hardware
detection to improve it for keyboard/mouse configuration, so that they
will just set up the modmap properly automagically.

Then, it would probably be wise to have some daemite that is started by
the session manager, handle some kind of OSD/execution setup, so that
all the keys are just happy. We may have Acme, gtkpbbuttons, and all of
those other things like that, but they are only halfway, specific
solutions, or at least, seemed to be when I looked at them.

-- dobey

On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 10:35, R.T. van der Wal wrote:
> To make sure you only have to set it up once, if any... I've spend hours to
> make the keys on my keyboard work the way I want. When I changed it over
> from PS/2 port to USB, I had to do it all over again because apparently it
> send other keycodes. In Windows this isn't any problem at all, strangely
> enough.
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Mike Hearn" <m.hearn at signal.qinetiq.com>
> To: <st at stereolyzer.net>
> Cc: <xdg-list at freedesktop.org>
> Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 2:01 PM
> Subject: Re: spec on "multimedia buttons"
> 
> 
> > I think that is an issue dealt with by the users desktop, in gnome it's
> > acme for instance. Why is a standard needed?
> >
> > On Fri, 2003-08-01 at 13:14, st at stereolyzer.net wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > >
> > > i'd like to ask for your opinion on a common spec for handling
> > > "multimedia keys" like volume +/- which are commonly used on laptops
> > > and (recent) usb keyboards.
> > >
> > > Let me briefly describe a showcase using the above example setting
> > > volume (for GNOME volume-applet):
> > > When the user modifies the volume via keys the volume-applet on the
> > > panel is activated and moves the slider up and down following the
> > > user input.
> > > So we wouldn't have to ways of displaying and setting the actual
> > > volume level with gtkpbbuttons / applet for keyboard / mouse.
> > >
> > > I think apple does something like that on OSX.
> > >
> > > The same would apply to screen brightness.
> > >
> > > Sorry if that's already an old topic, I might have missed the search
> > > function on the list archives.
> > >
> > > Thanks for your time,
> > > Robert