XKB error message with Xorg-6.8.1

[Sergey Udaltsov]

>          Sergey, one of our engineers (at XiG) spent a great deal of time
> trying to explain to you why your approach is flawed.  You simply wish to
> ignore the real issues involved.  We too have seen these 'bug' reports,
I do not ignore these issues. I would be happy if I could support
non-compatible servers. But XKB specs are weak at  some points - that
is why I had to relay on the xfree implementation details. I already
explained it in the discussion related to the bug you mention.

>          http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152105
Yeah, I remember that discussion. And I agreed that libxklavier does
depend on libxkbfile (the way it is implemented in xfree/xog). Again -
XKB specification does not provide the notion of
layouts/models/options - which is the most flexible solution (keymaps
are problematic, as I explained - and direct usage of symbols it too
low-level). If we would have layouts/models/options in XKB specs -
there would not be this discussion.

>          for the relevant discussion.  In short, your goals are worthwhile,
> but your implementation can only work with Xorg/XF servers that implement
> XKB exactly as does Xorg/XF does, since libxklavier depends on that
> specific vendor's implementation of XKB server configuration data.
This is absolute truth. No arguing...

>          As was pointed out, XKB specifically avoids specifying
> implementation details, which you choose to ignore.
Yeah, and I explained why I had to do so...

>          At the very least, could you please remove all error text
> that basically blames the server for not conforming to your idea of how
> XKB should work?
Unfortunately that is NOT true. Even users of xfree/xorg see this text
(and most of the bug reports are from these users).
There are several types of errors (the most generic ones):
1. non-conformant libxkbfile (the problem you mention)
2. non-combinable xkb layouts in xorg/xfree (including xorg 6.8.1) - hu, ca
3. bug in xfree 4.3 which makes some combinations of layouts "invalid"
- initially I got loads of these reports, not it is not important
since people mostly use xorg or xfree4.4
4. broken xorg.conf/XF86Config (like FC2) - referring non-existing rules.

>          ie: remove "Probably internal X server problem." error text.
Well, this is the most generic description I could create. Better
alternatives are welcome - if they cover all 4 type. BTW, the initial
bug report in this discussion is regarding xorg server - so we can
consider libxklavier in this situation as conformant.

>          "Xserver is not an Xorg/Xfree server, don't know what to do."
It is simply not correct error message for type #2-#4 - only for #1.
Though my current statistics shows that problems of the type #2 are
most frequent.

>         I think a better approach would be a new extension, and a library
> that won't choke if the server it connects to doesn't support it.
I am trying to make libxklavier not THAT dependent on libxklavier
details (especially on the systems which do not support multiple
layouts) - but unfortunately I do not have such X server to test the
library on. In the discussion related to the bug Ivan proposed the
solution which makes libxklavier behave better in some situation - but
I it is not a silver bullet, so there is always a chance that some X
server will cause problem because of non-conformance...

Regards,

Sergey