I love the ability of the N900 to do video calling (perhaps), multi-tasking, and the browser's excellent. However the list of incompatiblities/won't do's is growing longer. I've got a Thinkoutside BT keyboard as well, and I'm also disappointed this is not fully working. So what BT keyboard will work with the N900, if any? A Nokia one, perhaps?

So as well as not supporting USB host, it has crippled bluetooth?

yes. but who cares? it has a shiny, animated UI. (for the things it does.)

I have tried usb host, btw, because I saw usbcontrol tool in devel-testing, and I was hoping.... but no, it doesn't work

I used evtest tool to check what does the 'input' see, it looks like it sees that keys are being pressed:

Event: time 1258985728.318237, type 4 (Misc), code 4 (ScanCode), value 70013
Event: time 1258985728.322357, type 1 (Key), code 25 (P), value 1
Event: time 1258985728.351623, -------------- Report Sync ------------
Event: time 1258985728.366607, type 4 (Misc), code 4 (ScanCode), value 70013
Event: time 1258985728.367553, type 1 (Key), code 25 (P), value 0
Event: time 1258985728.369964, -------------- Report Sync ------------

Nokia-N900-42-11:/dev/input# /debian/usr/bin/evtest /dev/input/event4
Input driver version is 1.0.0
Input device ID: bus 0x5 vendor 0xa5c product 0xcdef version 0x300
Input device name: "Think Outside Keyboard"

Event: time 1258985734.619110, type 4 (Misc), code 4 (ScanCode), value 7002d
Event: time 1258985734.623657, type 1 (Key), code 12 (Minus), value 1
Event: time 1258985734.628509, -------------- Report Sync ------------
Event: time 1258985734.692718, type 4 (Misc), code 4 (ScanCode), value 7002d
Event: time 1258985734.695312, type 1 (Key), code 12 (Minus), value 0
Event: time 1258985734.700714, -------------- Report Sync ------------

'p' key above work. The '-' (minus) key doesn't work for me, but evtest sees it.
Maybe there is an issue further down the stream ?

If I do the same evtest for the physical keyboard:

Event: time 1258990597.538574, -------------- Report Sync ------------
Event: time 1258990606.320922, type 1 (Key), code 100 (RightAlt), value 1
Event: time 1258990606.321014, -------------- Report Sync ------------
Event: time 1258990606.448333, type 1 (Key), code 100 (RightAlt), value 0
Event: time 1258990606.448364, -------------- Report Sync ------------
Event: time 1258990609.110321, type 1 (Key), code 33 (F), value 1
Event: time 1258990609.110412, -------------- Report Sync ------------
Event: time 1258990609.236724, type 1 (Key), code 33 (F), value 0

I know what the behaviour is !!!

Basically the external keyboard is believed to be the same as the physical keyboad of the phone. That's why only the letters, backspace, arrows and dot and comma are working.
But if you press RightAlt+F on the external keyboard you will get an minus !

If you check the capabilities of the physical keyboard you'll see that is says it only supports a subset of codes:

Nokia-N900-42-11:~# /debian/usr/bin/evtest /dev/input/event1
Input driver version is 1.0.0
Input device ID: bus 0x19 vendor 0x1 product 0x1 version 0x3
Input device name: "omap_twl4030keypad"
Supported events:
Event type 0 (Sync)
Event type 1 (Key)
Event code 14 (Backspace)
Event code 16 (Q)
Event code 17 (W)
Event code 18 (E)
Event code 19 (R)
Event code 20 (T)
Event code 21 (Y)
Event code 22 (U)
Event code 23 (I)
Event code 24 (O)
Event code 25 (P)
Event code 28 (Enter)
Event code 29 (LeftControl)
Event code 30 (A)
Event code 31 (S)
Event code 32 (D)
Event code 33 (F)
Event code 34 (G)
Event code 35 (H)
Event code 36 (J)
Event code 37 (K)
Event code 38 (L)
Event code 42 (LeftShift)
Event code 44 (Z)
Event code 45 (X)
Event code 46 (C)
Event code 47 (V)
Event code 48 (B)
Event code 49 (N)
Event code 50 (M)
Event code 51 (Comma)
Event code 52 (Dot)
Event code 57 (Space)
Event code 65 (F7)
Event code 66 (F8)
Event code 67 (F9)
Event code 68 (F10)
Event code 87 (F11)
Event code 100 (RightAlt)
Event code 103 (Up)
Event code 105 (Left)
Event code 106 (Right)
Event code 108 (Down)
Event type 20 (Repeat)

The list of a normal desktop system is much higher.
I bet that somewhere upstream there is only code handling these instead of all (?)

I would also bet that if we could connect an USB keyboard we would have the same issue.

Apple's wireless keyboard uses encryption. I don't know what the BT setup is on the N900, but if you have a hcid.conf, you will need to add 'auth enable; encrypt enable;' to device {}

Confirmed, numbers and special keys don't work, the device completely ignores the service record of the BT keyboard and uses the system default instead .
The same keyboard works without any issue under diablo.

I think the problem is in the xkb setup of the X11.
However I don't know enough to fix it

If you compare /usr/share/X11/xkb/ against N810 you'll find that it contains less. Especially the symbols subdir where N810 has a lot of other layouts but the N900 just the RX44, RX51 and the SU8W.

I think we can fix this issue by setup, thus not needing to wait for Nokia or do code changes.

But would somebody with this knowledge apply to this issue pls ?