Re: Future handling of complex RGB devices on Linux v2

Pavel Machek
2024-02-22T17:42:37Z

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Hi!

> > To be honest, I think the kernel shouldn't include too much high-level complexity. If there is a desire to implement a generic display device on top of the RGB device, this should be a configurable service running in user space. The kernel should provide an interface to expose this emulated display as a "real" display to applications - unless this can also be done entirely in user space in a generic way.
>
> We really need to stop seeing per key addressable RGB keyboards as displays:
>
> 1. Some "pixels" are non square
> 2. Not all "pixels" have the same width-height ratio

They are quite close to square usually.

> 3. Not all rows have the same amount of pixels

True for cellphone displays, too. Rounded corners.

> 4. There are holes in the rows like between the enter key and then numpad

True for cellphone displays, too. Hole for camera.

> 5. Some "pixels" have multiple LEDs beneath them. These might be addressable
> per LEDs are the sub-pixels ? What about a 2 key wide backspace key vs
> the 1 key wide + another key (some non US layouts) in place of the backspace?
> This will be "2 pixels" in some layout and 1 pixel with maybe / maybe-not
> 2 subpixels where the sub-pixels may/may not be individually addressable ?

Treat those "sub pixels" as pixels. They will be in same matrix as the rest.

> For all these reasons the display analogy really is a bit fit for these keyboards
> we tried to come up with a universal coordinate system for these at the beginning
> of the thread and we failed ...

I'd suggest trying harder this time :-).

Best regards,
Pavel
--
People of Russia, stop Putin before his war on Ukraine escalates.

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