Re: cell-phone like keyboard driver anywhere?

[Holger Schurig]

> The problems that need to be resolved with the kernel approach.  Lets
> look at the '1-1-1' case:
>
> 1. Do you queue the characters "a" "^h" "b" "^h" "c" ?

There is no '1-1-1' case, the case is '1-1-1-pause'. Only after the pause 
would the software (may it be kernel or user-space) know that and what 
character has been meant. At the '1-1-1' state the user might press again a 1 
and then wait, then this might be an '1-pause' case.

The idea is that in the case of '1-1-1-pause' the driver queues exactly one 
character, e.g. the "c".

> 2. How do you handle the case where the app is waiting for one key press
>    only, but the user hits '1' three times?

See 1. The app doesn't see that this key has been hit three times.

> 3. what if the app doesn't want to accept another character into (say)
>    a text field?  The effect of "a" "^h" "b" will always replace the last
>    character.

When the driver would send Backspaces, then yes. Otherwise not.

So we both agree that sending backspaces from a cell-phone-like keyboard 
driver is a bad thing :-)