[gentoo-desktop] Re: What "just works" and what doesn't?

[Duncan]

Donnie Berkholz posted
<1097093890.2701.7.camel@×××××××××××××××××××××××××.edu>, excerpted below, 
on Wed, 06 Oct 2004 13:18:10 -0700:

> Yeah, XKB is really obscure and mostly poorly documented anywhere one
> goes. We should check into that.

Just adding my two cents..  

Yes.  I've generally been able to accomplish what I need to do by spending
a couple hours reading docs, then searching thru the actual files with the
"general idea" given me by those hours on the docs, until I find something
that looks reasonably like it should affect what I want to affect.  I then
tweak it, and start or restart X, to see whether it did what I wanted.
Lather, rinse, repeat, until I see the desired results.  <g>

Every time I do that, I think there /has/ to be a better way.  What's the
most frustrating is that I get bits and pieces of it, but the overall
picture of how all those bits and pieces fit together always seems /just/
out of my grasp.  Thus, the intelligently guessed trial and error method,
aka lather, rinse, repeat.

I expect this would be a /perfect/ place for Gentoo documentation! 
Further, from what always seemed to be /just/ out of reach each time I
needed to work with it, I'm quite sure once I saw a reasonable
explanation, I'd "know" it from then on, or at least would only need to go
back and skip things to pick it up again.  I'd /love/ to see a Gentoo Doc
on this, because I know how clear and lucid they tend to be, and expect
that'd pretty much be the end of my problems in the area!  Any future
issues would be a direct config hack away, as simple and intuitive as
immediately heading for /etc/package.mask has become, when confronted with
a new package that doesn't want to cooperate with me.  Again, the fact
that it's so in /that/ case only emphasizes the degree to which Gentoo
documentation has done its job and the principles so integrated into my
behavior patterns as to seem instinctive.  That's a GOOD thing!  I'd
/love/ for it to be that simple next time I found a need to tweak the
X keyboard layout!  (Well, the time after that, since I'd find and read
the new doc the first time, and it'd just seem "natural" the second... or
third.)

...  FWIW, while I've never run into i18n/l10n keyboard issues here, I
/do/ run one of those "internet" keyboard thingys, and like to take
advantage of the extra keys, which quickly become KDE hotkeys, launching
various menus.  That's all fine and good.  The /problem/ is when the name
for my internet keyboard changes, or the keysyms change, and a good
portion of my shortcuts no longer work!  The last issue was a bad keysym
for the XFree86-Standby key, in xorg 6.7, fixed in the later 6.7.99 betas
and in 6.8.0.  Changing the mapping solved it, but I /think/ I should have
been able to do it with a simple entry in xorg.conf or something, rather
than having to edit the installed xorg keyboard config files directly.  I
just couldn't figure out /how/, from the documentation, so ended up using
what /should/ have been the "hard" method.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little
temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." --
Benjamin Franklin



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