Re: Xen Virtual Keyboard modalias breaking uevents

[Phillip Susi <phill@thesusis.net>]

Dmitry Torokhov writes:

> I don't know why Xen keyboard exports that many keycodes ;) In general,
> my recommendation is to mirror the physical device when possible, and
> instantiate several devices so there is 1:1 relationship between virtual
> and physical devices.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why keys are even declared in
the first place.  PS/2 ports have no idea what keys are on the keyboard
plugged into them, so I guess they don't declare any?  And that doesn't
stop them from emitting any of the scan codes, so what is the use in
declaring them in the first place?

A lot of "interesting" buttons don't seem very interesting to me, such
as left and right parenthesis.  Is a user space mail program really
going to bypass X11/wayland and open input devices directly to look for
someone to press the "send mail" key?  Even if it did, why would it only
want to open a keyboard that advertises that it has such a key instead
of listening to all keyboards?  Even if all USB keyboards report all of
their special keys, the fact that you could still have a PS/2 keyboard
that has a "send mail" key on it means that the reporting function can
not be relied on and so you just have to listen on all keyboards anyhow.

I guess as long as not reporting keys doesn't stop you from using them,
then the Xen Virtual Keyboard driver should just report none, like the
PS/2 keyboard driver.