Commenting XF86keysym.h

[Jim Gettys]

On my way toward adding keysyms for OLPC, it was clear it would only be
responsible if I tried to better comment XF86keysym.h, since some of
what we'll be doing is appropriately defined there.

At one point, X.Org decided that the "right thing to do" was to accept
the XFree86 set of keysyms as part of the X standard.  We will stay out
of that address space for any new keysyms we add.

For those of you who've never worried about keysyms, the strategy,
though messy, is the "common" method, where we try to identify common
semantic meaning among function keys, to help enable application
portability to the extent possible.  Sometimes function keys are clear
from their name, but sometimes the intended meaning is more muddy.  What
is more, there may be some that were added that really weren't really
adhering to the "common" method.

In XFree86 days, most, but not all of the needed function keys appearing
on more modern PDA's and keyboards were added.  Unfortunately, they were
added without comments, leaving one somewhat at sea what was meant.

I went looking for XFree86 mail archives to see if they might shed any
light on some of these: unfortunately, XFree86 has taken down its
archives from before the split.  You will have to ask them why they did
that.  (If someone has XFree86 mail archives someplace, note we should
get them on line for prior art reasons).

In any case, I took my best stab at commenting the file.  Lines I'm less
than pretty sure about I put "??" in the comments.  If anyone knows what
was intended, please let me know.  I'll commit these once people have
had a chance to comment.
                               Thanks,
                                  - Jim Gettys

-- 
Jim Gettys
One Laptop Per Child




-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: XF86keysym.h
Type: text/x-chdr
Size: 11436 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.x.org/archives/xorg/attachments/20061011/932fd58d/attachment.h>