Additional NULL (??) layout group with evdev+hal

[Thomas Fritzsche]

Hi Peter,

I`m just new to all this, but here is something odd:
...
    key <LSGT> {
        type[group1]= "FOUR_LEVEL",
        symbols[Group1]= [            less,         greater,             bar,
    brokenbar ],
        symbols[Group2]= [            less,         greater ],
        symbols[Group3]= [             bar ]
    };
...

group1: German keyboard
group2: Japanese

This seems refer a key ONLY available in German Keyboard layout (it
doesn`t exist on Japanese keyboard).
I can understand this is here and group1 one get's type `FOUR_LEVEL"
as I have 3rd level indicator active (e.g. for € or @ in German
keyboard).

What I don`t understand is group2... simply there is not such a key on
a Japanese keyboards (but separate key with comma/less and
period/greater).

Here what I think:
1) Where are these symbols come from? --> It looks like a copy of
German keyboard layout
2) There is no special type assigned to group2 --> I just had a few
minutes to read in the xkb specs (e.g. chapter 12.2.2 Assigning
Symbols To Groups),,, I'm maybe not correct but 2 shift levels are
maybe the standard if no keytype is indicating somethings else....
As a result the system "implicitly" seems to assume a 3rd group (as
this would the the standard distribution of the symbols. So the copied
(??) "bar" might be in this 3rd group.

The source is a little bit complex for a keyboard novice, but this
comment you made
here:
	    /* See XKB Protocol Sec, Section 12.4.
	       A 1-group key with ABCDE on a 2 group keyboard must be
	       duplicated across all groups as ABABCDECDE.
	     */

This seems to somehow indicate a little you are duplicating here  entries.
Just a speculation: This might be in general OK, but I wonder such
special keys (e.g. just existing in German OR Japanese but not in
both). Does this still work correctly?
(especially having (maybe) not the key type ("FOUR_LEVEL") copied too?

Sorry for bothering you so much about this and thanks so much for your help.
Cheers,
Thomas

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 8:44 PM, Thomas Fritzsche <tf at noto.de> wrote:
> Hello Peter,
>
> output of "X -version":
> ......
> X.Org X Server 1.5.2
> Release Date: 10 October 2008
> X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
> Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.24-19-server i686 Ubuntu
> Current Operating System: Linux sakura 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov
> 4 19:33:20 UTC 2008 i686
> Build Date: 24 October 2008  08:00:16AM
> .....
>
> I double checked the source package contains the patches (as expected).
> There are some other patches applied by Ubuntu, relevant for keyboard
> seems to be only this one:
> ...........
> From 638cab7e1dc3711f7fb04155bcdabf4b8895cc5e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: Peter Hutterer <peter.hutterer at who-t.net>
> Date: Mon, 4 Aug 2008 17:08:36 +0930
> Subject: [PATCH] xfree86: force SwitchCoreKeyboard for evdev devices (updated).
>
> If an evdev keyboard device is added through the HAL mechanism, force a
> SwitchCoreKeyboard to load the evdev map into the VCK. This way, by the time a
> client starts the evdev keymap is already there, leading to less pain lateron.
> ...........
>
> I attached another "xkbcomp -xkb :0 -" output. This run is just a pure
> X session with xterm but nothing else.
>
> There is one warning that comes up when executing "xkbcomp -xkb :0 -":
> ...
> Warning:          Could not load keyboard geometry for :0
>                  BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)
>                  Resulting keymap file will not describe geometry
> ...
> (as it's on stderr it didn't show in the files attached before)
> This warning comes ONLY when I have this strange 3rd layout group.
> After calling manually setxkbmap it doesn't show this warning any more.
>
> Thanks for your help!
> Cheers,
> Thomas
>
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Peter Hutterer
> <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 11:11:29AM +0900, Thomas Fritzsche wrote:
>>> Hello Peter,
>>> That's odd....I have installed latest Ubuntu package for xorg-server
>>> and this is 1.5.2.
>>> http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/changelogs/pool/main/x/xorg-server/xorg-server_1.5.2-2ubuntu3/changelog
>>
>> 2:1.5.1-1ubuntu3 should have the patch and unless it disappeared since, it
>> should still be in there.
>>
>>> Is there any more information I can provide you except of the earlier
>>> attached output from "xkbcomp -xkb :0 -" ?
>>
>> Please try to find the simplest reproduceable test-case. Ideally, this would
>> be a plain X server with nothing but xterm (or even just the X server itself).
>>
>> Other than that, it's pretty much down to looking at the code.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>  Peter
>>
>