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From: guy@gorodish.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: keyboard remapping: help!
Message-ID: <12508@sun.uucp>
Date: Sun, 1-Feb-87 05:14:41 EST
Article-I.D.: sun.12508
Posted: Sun Feb  1 05:14:41 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Feb-87 16:49:33 EST
References: <1636@oddjob.UChicago.EDU>
Sender: news@sun.uucp
Reply-To: guy@sun.UUCP (Guy Harris)
Distribution: world
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Mountain View
Lines: 26

>Does anyone know of a good way to remap a terminal (sun especially) to the
>Dvorak layout?  ...The problem I'm having is that some programs seem to
>take input directly from the terminal (so I can't pipe stdin to them through
>a filter).

Well, in part it depends on what you mean by "Sun, especially" here.
If it's a Sun workstation, the "terminal" you use is a 68K-based
machine running SunOS, so there are some non-standard things you can
do (i.e., you might be able to do the equivalent of changing the
terminal firmware, since that equivalent is a combination of kernel
code and a user-mode program).  In fact, in the general case you
*have* to do this, since applications not run from within a shell or
command window don't see anything resembling a terminal or terminal
driver; the kernel window system code reads from the keyboard and
feeds the events to the appropriate "/dev/win*" device.

There is an admittedly rather opaque description of key mapping in
section 4 of the Sun UNIX manuals.

If you're talking about terminals plugged into serial ports, one or
more of the techniques mentioned (modifying the terminal driver or
pushing a streams module onto it, and using a pseudo-tty) are
available, depending on what the OS on the machine in question
supports.  There are pros and cons to both approaches, but the point
that would clinch the argument at present would probably be which
techniques were possible under the OS in question.