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+Overview {#mainpage}
+========
+
+xkbcommon is a keymap compiler and support library which processes a
+reduced subset of keymaps as defined by the XKB specification. Primarily,
+a keymap is created from a set of Rules/Model/Layout/Variant/Options names,
+processed through an XKB ruleset, and compiled into a struct xkb_keymap,
+which is the base type for all xkbcommon operations.
+
+From an xkb_keymap, an xkb_state object is created which holds the current
+state of all modifiers, groups, LEDs, etc, relating to that keymap. All
+key events must be fed into the xkb_state object using xkb_state_update_key().
+Once this is done, the xkb_state object will be properly updated, and the
+keysyms to use can be obtained with xkb_state_key_get_syms().
+
+libxkbcommon does not distribute a dataset itself, other than for testing
+purposes. The most common dataset is xkeyboard-config, as used by all
+current distributions for their X11 XKB data. More information on
+xkeyboard-config is available here:
+ http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XKeyboardConfig
+
+
+API
+===
+
+While xkbcommon's API is somewhat derived from the classic XKB API as found
+in <X11/extensions/XKB.h> and friends, it has been substantially reworked to
+expose fewer internal details to clients. The only supported API is available
+in <xkbcommon/xkbcommon.h>. Any definition not in this header (including
+accessing internal structures through the old macros previously available)
+should be regarded as an implementation detail and is liable to change at any
+time.
+
+During its early development, xkbcommon does not promise API or ABI stability.
+Regardless, we will attempt to not break ABI during a minor release series,
+so applications written against 0.1.0 should be completely compatible with
+0.1.3, but not necessarily with 0.2.0. However, new symbols may be introduced
+in any release. Thus, anyone packaging xkbcommon should make sure any package
+depending on it depends on a release greater than or equal to the version it
+was built against (or earlier, if it doesn't use any newly-introduced
+symbols), but less than the next major release.
+
+xkbcommon 1.x will offer full API and ABI stability for its lifetime, with a
+soname of libxkbcommon.so.1. Any ABI breaks will wait until xkbcommon 2.0,
+which will be libxkbcommon.so.2.
+
+The xkbcomp command-line tool has also been removed, although this will
+likely reappear in a later release.
+
+
+Relation to X11
+===============
+
+Relative to the XKB 1.1 specification implemented in current X servers,
+xkbcommon has removed support for some parts of the specification which
+introduced unnecessary complications. Many of these removals were in fact
+not implemented, or half-implemented at best, as well as being totally
+unused in the standard dataset.
+
+Notable removals:
+ - geometry support
+ + there were very few geometry definitions available, and while
+ xkbcommon was responsible for parsing this insanely complex format,
+ it never actually did anything with it
+ + hopefully someone will develop a companion library which supports
+ keyboard geometries in a more useful format
+ - KcCGST (keycodes/compat/geometry/symbols/types) API
+ + use RMLVO instead; KcCGST is now an implementation detail
+ + including pre-defined keymap files
+ - XKM support
+ + may come in an optional X11 support/compatibility library
+ - around half of the interpret actions
+ + pointer device, message and redirect actions in particular
+ - non-virtual modifiers
+ + core and virtual modifiers have been collapsed into the same
+ namespace, with a 'significant' flag that largely parallels the
+ core/virtual split
+ - radio groups
+ + completely unused in current keymaps, never fully implemented
+ - overlays
+ + almost completely unused in current keymaps
+ - key behaviors
+ + used to implement radio groups and overlays, and to deal with things
+ like keys that physically lock; unused in current keymaps
+ - indicator behaviours such as LED-controls-key
+ + the only supported LED behaviour is key-controls-LED; again this
+ was never really used in current keymaps
+
+Notable additions:
+ - 32-bit keycodes
+ - extended number of modifiers
+ - extended number of groups
+ - multiple keysyms per level
+ + this requires incompatible dataset changes, such that X11 would
+ not be able to parse these
+
+
+Development
+===========
+
+An extremely rudimentary homepage can be found at:
+ http://xkbcommon.org
+
+xkbcommon is maintained in git at freedesktop.org:
+ git://anongit.freedesktop.org/git/libxkbcommon
+
+Patches are always welcome, and may be sent to either xorg-devel@lists.x.org,
+or wayland-devel@lists.freedesktop.org. Bugs are tracked in Bugzilla at:
+ http://bugs.freedesktop.org
+
+The maintainer is Daniel Stone, who can be reached at:
+ <daniel@fooishbar.org>
+
+
+Credits
+=======
+
+Many thanks are due to Dan Nicholson for his heroic work in getting xkbcommon
+off the ground initially, as well as to Ran Benita for subsequent development.