Re: [PATCH] cannot input bar with JP106 keyboards

John Bradford
2003-12-20T12:40:44Z

> > > By the way, the bar key on JP 106 keyboard is actually the backslash
> > > key and bar is equal to shift-backslash on JP 106. But there is
> > > another backslash key (scancode 0x73) and input of backslash is not a
> > > problem.
> >
> > Keycode 183 is correct for the japanese backslash key. 2.4 didn't
> > differentiate, 2.6 does. You just need to update your keymap.
>
> 2.4 kernel does differentiate two backslash key on JP 106 keyboard.
>
> When I press lower-right backslash (scancode 0x73), I get keycode
> 89 on both Linux 2.4 and 2.6.
>
> When I press upper-right backslash (scancode 0x7d), whose key top is
> Japanese yen and bar, I get keycode 124 on Linux 2.4 but 183 on Linux
> 2.6.
>
> Is the change of keycode of upper-right backslash a new feature of
> Linux 2.6? What is the advantage of this new feature?

The placement of some keys seems to have changed over time. For
example, tilde was once shift-0, whilst shift-caret was once overbar.
My keyboard is marked in this way, and I am used to using shift-0 for
tilde, however, shift-caret is apparently now popular as tilde, with
shift-0 producing nothing.

Backslash and Yen share the same code in 8-bit variations of
ASCII-based. Therefore, the lower-right backslash key and the
upper-right Yen key may in some cases be used interchangably.

However, with unicode representations, both backslash and Yen and
tilde and overbar have separate codes and I personally think it would
be a good idea to default to the traditional key-mappings, so that
these characters can be easily input on systems which correctly
support them.

Note - whilst I am fairly sure the above information is accurate, I am
less sure about the following:

As I understand it there was traditionally a distinction between pipe,
(a broken vertical line), and bar, (solid vertical line).

The markings on my keyboard are as follows:

Pipe is the fourth character on the lower-right backslash key.
Bar is the second character on the upper-right yen key.

However, my keyboard emulates a US one in Set 2, and produces the
Linux 'pipe' symbol, for example as in

cat foo | less

when the bar key is pressed.

John.