Subject: Re: akbd now supports raw mode
To: None <>
From: Aymeric Vincent <>
List: current-users
Date: 08/14/2002 16:01:16
Matthias Drochner <> writes:

> said:
> > - akbd now supports raw mode (from OpenBSD) - the X server can now use
> > keyboards in raw mode in the wscons case
> >   (from XFree86)
> Excuse my stupid question: Why is this an advantage?
> I've always considered RAWKBD an evil hack, just to get X working
> until a wskbd aware input driver is implemented.

I don't think this is a stupid question.

I did add the support because Matthieu Herrb told me the XFree86
policy is to try to have all low-level drivers generate AT keycodes. I
have no opinion on this policy, and the code I added is not very
intrusive. If it happens to be completely useless in the long term, we
can always stop using it.

Note that if you continue to use the "wskbd" protocol, you will not
notice any change.

So, this is not an advantage in itself; but it gets us closer to what
Linux and OpenBSD do, and so we can expect to benefit from the
improvements done for/by them.