Key for tablet rotation?

Key for tablet rotation?

[Matthew Garrett]

Many tablet PCs have a button to indicate that the screen should be 
rotated from landscape to portrait mode. There's currently no 
standardisation here - a couple of drivers seem to be using 
KEY_DIRECTION, and others are just being mapped to arbitrary F keys. So:

1) What is KEY_DIRECTION supposed to be for?
2) If it's not suitable, do we still have space for a KEY_ROTATE?

-- 
Matthew Garrett | mjg59@srcf.ucam.org

Re: Key for tablet rotation?

[Dmitry Torokhov]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 09:17:14PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Many tablet PCs have a button to indicate that the screen should be 
> rotated from landscape to portrait mode. There's currently no 
> standardisation here - a couple of drivers seem to be using 
> KEY_DIRECTION, and others are just being mapped to arbitrary F keys. So:
> 
> 1) What is KEY_DIRECTION supposed to be for?

Hmm, that is the good question. It looks like it's been introduced with
the first patch for input events that Vojtech brought in 2.3 kernels and
I do not see any users for it in mainline.

Vojtech, do you remember by any chance what you intended it to be used
for?

> 2) If it's not suitable, do we still have space for a KEY_ROTATE?
> 

We still have a few slots available but I'd lean towards KEY_DIRECTION
(with better name maybe).

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Key for tablet rotation?

[Dmitry Torokhov]

Now if I only did not forget to CC Vojtech first time around...

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 02:54:49PM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 09:17:14PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > Many tablet PCs have a button to indicate that the screen should be 
> > rotated from landscape to portrait mode. There's currently no 
> > standardisation here - a couple of drivers seem to be using 
> > KEY_DIRECTION, and others are just being mapped to arbitrary F keys. So:
> > 
> > 1) What is KEY_DIRECTION supposed to be for?
> 
> Hmm, that is the good question. It looks like it's been introduced with
> the first patch for input events that Vojtech brought in 2.3 kernels and
> I do not see any users for it in mainline.
> 
> Vojtech, do you remember by any chance what you intended it to be used
> for?
> 
> > 2) If it's not suitable, do we still have space for a KEY_ROTATE?
> > 
> 
> We still have a few slots available but I'd lean towards KEY_DIRECTION
> (with better name maybe).
> 
> -- 
> Dmitry

-- 
Dmitry

Re: Key for tablet rotation?

[Vojtech Pavlik]

On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 02:56:02PM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> Now if I only did not forget to CC Vojtech first time around...
> 
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 02:54:49PM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 09:17:14PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > Many tablet PCs have a button to indicate that the screen should be 
> > > rotated from landscape to portrait mode. There's currently no 
> > > standardisation here - a couple of drivers seem to be using 
> > > KEY_DIRECTION, and others are just being mapped to arbitrary F keys. So:
> > > 
> > > 1) What is KEY_DIRECTION supposed to be for?
> > 
> > Hmm, that is the good question. It looks like it's been introduced with
> > the first patch for input events that Vojtech brought in 2.3 kernels and
> > I do not see any users for it in mainline.
> > 
> > Vojtech, do you remember by any chance what you intended it to be used
> > for?
> > 
> > > 2) If it's not suitable, do we still have space for a KEY_ROTATE?
> > > 
> > 
> > We still have a few slots available but I'd lean towards KEY_DIRECTION
> > (with better name maybe).

This is way too long ago, sorry. I suppose it was a key on one of the
early extended AT keyboards, not really related to tablet computing.
Now, if it's not used anywhere, it makes good sense to reuse it.

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
Director SuSE Labs

Re: Key for tablet rotation?

[Vojtech Pavlik]

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 10:20:25AM +0100, Vojtech Pavlik wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 02:56:02PM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> > Now if I only did not forget to CC Vojtech first time around...
> > 
> > On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 02:54:49PM -0800, Dmitry Torokhov wrote:
> > > On Tue, Feb 16, 2010 at 09:17:14PM +0000, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> > > > Many tablet PCs have a button to indicate that the screen should be 
> > > > rotated from landscape to portrait mode. There's currently no 
> > > > standardisation here - a couple of drivers seem to be using 
> > > > KEY_DIRECTION, and others are just being mapped to arbitrary F keys. So:
> > > > 
> > > > 1) What is KEY_DIRECTION supposed to be for?
> > > 
> > > Hmm, that is the good question. It looks like it's been introduced with
> > > the first patch for input events that Vojtech brought in 2.3 kernels and
> > > I do not see any users for it in mainline.
> > > 
> > > Vojtech, do you remember by any chance what you intended it to be used
> > > for?
> > > 
> > > > 2) If it's not suitable, do we still have space for a KEY_ROTATE?
> > > > 
> > > 
> > > We still have a few slots available but I'd lean towards KEY_DIRECTION
> > > (with better name maybe).
> 
> This is way too long ago, sorry. I suppose it was a key on one of the
> early extended AT keyboards, not really related to tablet computing.

Indeed, it was the case - it got in together with KEY_CYCLEWINDOWS,
KEY_MSDOS, KEY_WWW, and the (in)famous KEY_COFFEE.

> Now, if it's not used anywhere, it makes good sense to reuse it.

-- 
Vojtech Pavlik
Director SuSE Labs