Re: [K12OSN] keyboard layout

[Eric Harrison <eharrison mail mesd k12 or us>]

On Sat, 29 Nov 2003, Guy Lessard wrote:

>Here in Québec, we use the CF (Canadian French) Keyboard layout, it uses
>the basic US keyboard layout (qwerty) instead of the French (Azerty)
>layout.
>Monday, i will look into this.

As a typical "english only" american, I would like to see a solution
as well. I certainly won't be the one coming up with it.

I don't know what the aggregate numbers are, but I know of at least one
school I support that has native speakers of 28 different languages.

Multi-lingual support is a big deal to the schools I support.

-Eric

>robert a écrit :
>
>> hi paul,
>> this is what I've discovered so far -
>> there's more than one way to turn on a light- :))
>> run  the command:
>> xev  to get the keycodes for your keyboard
>>
>> keycodes need to be translated to XFree86 format (HEX)
>> view list at:
>> /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86
>>
>> Jamie Zawinski wrote a gui keymap script called
>> xkeycaps with 40+ keyboard layouts,it will create
>> a .xmodmap in $HOME, in effect each user could switch
>> keyboards on the fly, however it solves only part of the problem.
>>
>> XFree86 states you could have 3 layouts using the meta key or ALT_R key
>> however in ltsp it hasn't worked for me-
>>
>> so from what I gather there are two ways (maybe more) to customize
>> your keyboard.
>>
>> add a script to $HOME/.bash_profile or .xsession with new keymap,
>>
>> add .xmodmap to $HOME/
>>
>> add keyboard entries to lts.conf and use the iso keyboard layouts
>> found in /opt/ltsp/i386/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/ or modify them to
>> your needs.
>>
>> for me I need a bilingual english US/french ca layout
>> however the keymaps the way they are is useless, you'll see why-
>>
>> -XFree86
>> XkbModel (pc101-106 or a known brand)
>> XkbLayout (keycodes)
>> XkbSymbols (caracters,ie:en,fr,latin,asian....)
>> XKBOptions (I think this is for meta keys)
>>
>> for french the best layout is fr. it has all the french symbols
>> but the keyboard is completely different from us -Q is replaced with A
>> among other keys,so its too difficult to memorize both.
>> The ca_enhanced layout only has one usefull ALT_R key -egrave.
>>
>> with MS you can use ALT_R + decimal codes on the number pad for a
>> caracter map. XFree86 is nt setup to do this.
>> that's as far as I've gotten so far-
>>
>> reference:
>> http://www.europe.redhat.com/documentation/mini-HOWTO/Intkeyb-4.php3
>> http://reviewed.homelinux.org/en/xfreekeyboard.html
>> http://www.jwz.org/xkeycaps/
>>
>> robert
>>