Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ginosko!usc!bloom-beacon!EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU!rws
From: rws@EXPO.LCS.MIT.EDU (Bob Scheifler)
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: Inventing A Shift Key
Message-ID: <8909121424.AA11278@expire.lcs.mit.edu>
Date: 12 Sep 89 14:24:51 GMT
References: <8909121315.AA01197@cass.odi.com>
Sender: daemon@bloom-beacon.MIT.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 19


    So you would put code into every single client to individually 
    interpret Num Lock?

Yes.

    If a piece of hardware had a key marked
    "Shift" that just sent a keycode, surely one would diddle the server
    to remember state and shift a to A.

No.  Interpretation of Shift and Lock (and Control and ...) is already done
on the client side, not in the server.  Num Lock should be no different in
this respect.

You might well argue that Xlib's XLookupString should have support for NumLock
in it, and you'll find people to agree with you.  There are other things that
people claim XLookupString should also handle, like Compose processing and
complex input methods (e.g. Kana-Kanji conversion).  All of this is currently a
discussion topic within the X Consortium.