thanks. editing the fdi file fixed it. the broadcom keyboard was listed as the first item in the list when i open the extkbd ui. because it had all settings as default, that meant the keyboard language was set to afghanistan. so when i start typing, i get arabic text on my device. annoying, true, but it could be fixed by changing the broadcom keyboard language to usa and setting the appropriate layout. this tells me the n900 is defaulting to the broadcom keyboard settings when i connect my thinkoutside keyboard.

i edited it by hand because i had disableplugins = (blank) and i couldn't get my ps3 controller to pair. this was the setting i had for a long time way before you made your app compatible with the sixaxis package.

thanks again for the fix.