Hello
Concerning external (usb/bluetooth/whatever) keyboards, I am still having problems due to mapping, and I'm exploring various ways to fix that. No perfect solution yet, but since I purchased an axim keyboard and I *want* it to work *now* you can expect a solution pretty soon - it's called Motivation, you know :-)
Regarding internal ir, I honnestly see no reason why it should be done. IRK does a pretty good job, and unlike bluetooth ir and serial keyboard are following "various" standards. Moreover it could cause problems to ir beaming, ir remote control etc.
So basically if it would technically better to have that driver in the kernel, it'd be much more complex and sounds like a bad idea,
Regarding sticky fn in console mode, this is due to my past attempts to have an external keyboard working correctly. It should be fixed soon, along with the rest of external keyboard problems.
I still don't understand how qtopia manage holdkeys.tbl etc. to do keyboard mapping so I may have to do that at kernel level.