Re: kmsg --- get the boot messages

["Joshua Rosen" <rozzin@geekspace.com>]

 [ISO-8859-1] Niklas_Höglund writes:

> On Mon, 25 Sep 2000, OKUJI Yoshinori wrote:
> > > We also need to decide on the external kbd interface and make
> > > it official (somewhere in <mach/i386/kd.h> or so). Several programs
> > > are shipping their own version already.
> > 
> >   IMO, /dev/kdb should disappear. Having two devices to read a
> > keyboard is nonsense. Instead, /dev/console should support an
> > interface to read raw key codes. Once Mach just exports a bare console
> > device (instead of the current cooked device) to the user space, this
> > would be straightforward.
> 
> In some cases it might be good to be able to connect multiple keyboards,
> but not the same number of screens. It seems more modular to me to let the
> console use a keyboard device and a output device.

Indeed--I've been wishing, for a while, that I had a way to connect
multiple keyboards to my PC simultaneously--for one, I could simulate a
200-key keyboard (I could have meta, hyper, super, *and* Windows keys:),
along with Greek and whatever other keys I found convenient). The idea of
connecting multiple keyboards just like one connects multiple joysticks
(for multiplayer games or such) is a rather nice one, too.

Of course, there isn't a lot of application software that supports
multikeyboard input (yet)..., but just think of the whole new type of
interaction between the PC and the users if a single console (or
application) supported an arbitrarily-sized set of simultaneous arbitrary
input devices (I can think of numerous co-operative editing sessions during
which I'd rather not have had to say `Oh--give me the keyboard now').

I've already got my computer running multiple pointing devices, without any
shared button functionality between them (though I have been rather
disappointed that they need to share the cursor).... With USB becoming
popular, it would appear that it's becoming -physically- possible to
connect numerous devices of any sort to the computer..., but the software
still won't let me do it.