seeking config details for laptop keyboard and buttons

Working with laptops or notebooks, some of the keys and buttons seem handles as "keyboard" while others are handled as "special". Nowhere do I find one place where all of these funnel through before events get created or X11 gets told about press and release.

QUESTION: How do I track down all of this keyboard and button config information on an existing installation?

ANALYSIS:
The hardware must interact with one or more drivers of some sort. Some keys/buttons are "keyboard" while others are "special" [NOTE -- I call them special, but the community must have a name. Examples include "blue keys"
accessed with a special Fn shift and separated volume, mute, DVD eject and similar buttons. Other special "buttons" include laptop-open and laptop-closed, key-locked and key-unlocked, bay-docked and bay-undocked mechanical items.]

I'm trying to make my way around HAL, ACPI, UDEV, UPSTART, and every other config I can find. Follow, and tangled up with these somewhere each has a handoff to X11 somewhere and somehow.

I understand that much of this is rapidly evolving from Hardy on -- especially where input devices (pointers, keyboards, etc) and displays interact with X11. More parts connect, provoke HAL and UDEV events, load kernel module drivers, ... , and X11 finds out about them eventually.

Somewhere there must be a road map to how to find out what is going on with the laptop in front of me. I'd settle for a couple of yellow bricks at the start of the road.

~~~ Dan 0;-D