Date: Wed, 09 Nov 2011 21:02:55 +0100 From: Michael Cardell Widerkrantz <mc@hack.org> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: X server and xinit works excellent....almost. Message-ID: <86pqh1njww.fsf@kropotkin.hack.org> References: <4EB88225.9020702@bredband.net> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1111080806260.70888@wonkity.com> <20111108205600.7a8e0205.freebsd@edvax.de> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1111081321010.72738@wonkity.com> <alpine.BSF.2.00.1111081331150.72921@wonkity.com> <20111108215114.24d336e6.freebsd@edvax.de> <4EBA5EBD.7020501@bredband.net>
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Samuel Magnusson <samuel.magnusson5@bredband.net>, 2011-11-09 12:06 (+0100): > Which made me remember that I had the exact same > problem with my swedish keyboardmappings the very first time I started > X. I just couldn't get it to work and nearly gave up before I tried > the setxkbmap method and put them into .xinitrc, which saved me. > Although I had put the exact same "rules" and "layout" options in > xorg.conf and double checked the format and spelling hundreds of > times. The problem was still there now: when I commented it out in > .xinitrc I got the US keyboard in xterm in spite of the xorg.conf > settings. XKB is a bit of a mystery compared to good old xmodmap. A while ago I tried to understand it. The result is a small guide on how you can use XKB to define your own keyboard mapping and load it without having to be root. I used my own version of a Swedish keyboard on a Happy Hacking Keyboard as an example: http://hack.org/mc/writings/xkb.html > The thing that really made it was the Option "AutoAddDevice" "off", > which I had failed to notice. Yes, this is really important, especially if you don't want that dreadful HAL on your system. Considering that the default is on and HAL isn't a dependency for the X server, many users were surprised when they didn't have any working mouse nor keyboard! I don't use HAL and it seems even the X.org project has moved away from HAL even if such modern X.org X servers are not yet in ports. > It doesn't warn that if it is NOT disabled the InputDevice sections > won't work at all. And "no devices will be added" sounds like a bad > thing, so you rather leave this option enabled... Perhaps you can file a Problem Report (PR) with a suggested text? I suggest you add the text to the handbook since I assume the X.org project won't touch manual pages for the ancient X servers we use in FreeBSD. > Now I'm curious: > > Is it then so that in the "new style" Xorg the XML-method will > override HAL, and this is the new default way of providing opitons > that formerly were in the InputDevice sections in xorg.conf? What new style XML method? AFAIK the more modern X.org X servers uses the Linux udev instead of HAL. Those servers are not yet available on FreeBSD but presumably it would be possible to use devd for the same purpose. > And should HAL have discovered my swedish keyboard automatically in > the first place, so there was something going wrong there? How would HAL know that the keyboard had a Swedish layout? No such information is sent through USB or PS/2 when you attach a keyboard. This is up to your own language settings, either with what you have entered in the form of setxkbmap or xkbcomp in your .xinitrc/.xsession or your settings in the desktop environment of your choice. -- http://hack.org/mc/ Plain text e-mails, please. HTML messages sent to me are silently deleted. OpenPGP welcome, 0xE4C92FA5.
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