[mythtv] 2.6 IR Keyboards

[Darren Hart]

This being my first post to the devel list, please forgive me if this
has been exhausted.

As you know the 2.6.6+ kernel has support for treating IR remotes as
keyboards through the event system.  The current approach has several
issues IMO.  


1) First, the kernel can really only recognize the receiver, not the
remote.  This means that one receiver could be used for several
different remotes (like with the PVR-[23]50 for example which has at
least 3 different remotes that I am aware of).  Unfortunately, the
keymappings are hardcoded into the kernel.  IMO, the system would be
much more useful if a keymap could be loaded in much the same way some
USB devices load firmware.  

2) The current hardcoded maps use KEY_* event codes.  IMO people don't
think of remotes as keyboards, the closest parallel would be more like a
joystick.  My remote has keys that are bound to keyboard keys that I
don't like, but unless I recompile the kernel I can't really change
that.  It seems to me that remotes should use BTN_* event codes rather
than KEY_* codes.

The last part of the equation, and the reason I posted here in addition
to LKML, is that we need /dev/input/event* support in user space
applications.  Something like the gnome media keys, where there is a
list of actions and you map your available event codes to those
actions.  It would be great if there was such a configuration dialog for
mythtv frontend.  It would be pretty simple, just three columns:

STATE     ACTION     EVENT_CODE
-------------------------
LIVETV    INFO       BTN_BLUE,KEY_I
etc.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Darren Hart