Re: [tlug] xfree and different keyboardlayouts

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen@example.com>]

>>>>> "Botond" == Botond Botyanszki <tlug@example.com> writes:

    Botond>  - it is #*%$&! ugly,

Of course.  So is the console.  This kind of utility needs to function
on any X server; you won't necessarily have GTK+ or Qt available.

    Botond>  - don't like GUIs generating config files,

Huh?  This is one of the most appropriate GUIs I've seen.  I don't
rant about GUI and configure wizards because GUI sucks in principle, I
rant because GUI is used for inappropriate applications, typically
severely restrict the available configurations, and worse, often fail
to do any sanity checking.  (The last is not reasonable if _only_ the
GUI will _ever_ be used to generate the config file, because typically
the language generated by the GUI is a subset of the sane configs.)

The XKeyCaps GUI doesn't generate the config file, the user does.
Sure, the GUI translates GUI events to config language sentences, but
it's chokuyaku, just a table lookup.  What XKeyCaps does that's useful
is (1) provide the GUI so the user doesn't have to look up key codes,
and often can do without keysyms, and (2) to check constraints that
users (even experts) are often unaware of, or are very difficult (even
impossible) to recognize from the config file.

    Botond>  - last time (4 years ago?) I looked at it, it didn't have
    Botond> the Japanese keys, not to mention notebook layouts.

Ah, that's probably still true.  And it really should be updated to
handle the XKBD extension (which would automatically expand its
repertoire of keyboards, since the XKBD database includes geometry and
a utility to print out keyboards pictorially).


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