On Monday 11 October 2004 20:49, Cris Perdue wrote:

Hi,

Hopefully an easy question: can someone recommend good ways to enter eastern European (or other non-U.S. characters) through a U.S.-style keyboard? Hopefully the same technique will work for any European language. (I'm not planning to enter any asian language input.)

Well, I've got here an updated SuSE 9.1 FTP running with the latest KDE 3.3.0. There are two things you can do: 1) Use a special key combination, then enter a letter-combo: Press <R-Shift>-<R-Ctrl>, then enter e.g. <A> <">, you'll see a 'Ä' To see what letter-combo's are available, see: /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/include/ What files actually work is defined in /etc/sysconfig/keyboard, variable 'COMPOSETABLE'. I have there: COMPOSETABLE="clear winkeys shiftctrl latin1.add" These are files in the directory /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/include/ compose.clear compose.winkeys compose.shiftctrl compose.latin1.add Ok, the file compose.clear is nowhere to be found, but the other 3 files are there. ;) 2) To use the so-called 'dead-keys' <'>, <">, <^>, and <~>: Open the Control Center, goto Regional & Accessibility -> Keyboard Layout a) [x] Enable keyboard layouts In the 'Available layouts' listview, select 'U.S. English w/ deadkeys' and click [Add]. Click [Apply] The flag of the U.S.A. appears in the System Tray. (I have this too, but it's long ago since I enabled this) b) In the System Tray, click on the flag, it should be Dark purple with the letters 'US'. Hovering with the mouse above the flag should popup a hint-window saying 'U.S. English w/ deadkeys'. Now try to make an Ä: Type <">-<A> (double quote followed by an A) That allows these letters: ÁÀÂÄÃ ÉÈÊË ÍÌÏÎ Ñ ÓÒÔÖÕ ÚÙÛÜ Ý áàâäã éèêë íìîï ñ óòôöõ úùûü ý Of course the font you are using must contain the desired character! GNU-unifont has most characters. I use Bitstream Vera, and it has all the 48 characters I mentioned in point 2b). Cheers, Leen

Hopefully an easy question: can someone recommend good ways to enter eastern European (or other non-U.S. characters) through a U.S.-style keyboard? Hopefully the same technique will work for any European language. (I'm not planning to enter any asian language input.)

Good question, I'm in the same position (though not in USA). KDE's multiple keyboard layout feature is unfortunately useless when it comes to using multiple languages *SIMULTANEOUSLY*. Clicking on a new layout for entering a few characters (and that blind), then clicking it off again, and that 3 times a sentence is beyond a joke. There are 2 options: 1) Use the compose key. You then press compose, and a sequence of 2 keys which make up the character you want to enter. The two-key sequence is carefully chosen, e.g. '"' and 'a' give 'ä' (a-umlaut). You can map any keyboard key into "compose", one of the mickey keys is a good choice. It should also be possible to make a keyboard LED go on when pressing compose and while entering the two-key sequence. 2) Use alt-gr. On some European keyboards right-alt is actually labelled as such, and switches the keyboard to an alternative layout. X11 supports 2 different layouts, and each can be shifted as well. One can set this up that altgr-a gives ä, and shift-altgr-a gives Ä. Obviously set the characters up the wasy you use them. Many are already setup, e.g. altgr-2 gives ² (2 superscript). Setting this up however is a PITA and, in typical Looonix fashion, requires juggling of numbers and obscure commands. Roughly the way it works: each key produces a number, which is then translated into a key symbol (keysym). The key symbol is what produces the effect you want. You change the translation table. On top of that are special symbols like Alt_R, Shift_L which modify the translation process when pressed with other keys. The compose thing is even more special... The command xev displays each key number and the symbol(s) it currently produces. You *must* start xev from a shell window, because that's where the output is displayed. xmodmap -pm displays the modifier map. The keysym for altgr is Mode_switch, and must show up at least once in any of mod1 to mod5. The keysym for Compose is Multi_key, and by the looks of it it doesn't need to be inserted as modifier to work. xmodmap -pk and xmodmap -pke display the currentkeymap. You also use xmodmap to change the translation table (or keymap). I suggest you put all your changes into a file called ~/.Xmodmap, I use keycode 117 = Multi_key keycode 116 = Mode_switch keycode 0x1E = u U udiaeresis Udiaeresis keycode 0x20 = o O odiaeresis Odiaeresis keycode 0x26 = a A adiaeresis Adiaeresis keycode 0x27 = s S ssharp section keycode 26 = e E EuroSign keycode 10 = 1 exclam onesuperior exclamdown keycode 11 = 2 at twosuperior oneeighth keycode 12 = 3 numbersign threesuperior sterling keycode 13 = 4 dollar onequarter currency You can load the file with xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap, though X loads it by itself on startup (at least on SuSE). Test the file manually first, as it won't load properly if there's an error in it. Removing a non-existing keysym or keycode and things like that are errors, and processing of the file is terminated. The keycodes are hardware-specific, i.e. can change with different keyboard models. You'll have to use xev to find out for your keyboard, but the typical PC104 or PC105 keyboards all seem to produce the same keycodes. HTH, Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.