Entering eastern European characters on U.S. keyboard
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.) Thanks for any help! Regards, Cris
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
Thanks everyone for your information and suggestions on entering eastern European characters. I looked at the facilities you all referred me to and followed the trail a bit further. The keymaps facility is pretty difficult to work with from my point of view, and kcharselect does not seem to exist as an executable program in my SUSE9.1 system, but I did find a pretty useable facility right in KDE. (Gee, should I be surprised?) In the KDE Control Center, under "Regional & Accessibility", choose "Keyboard Layout". Check the box to "Enable keyboard layouts", then add one or more _additional_ layouts beyond your normal one. I chose "Bosnian", though Croatian or Serbian (Latin) would probably have been as good. Click "Apply" and you are in business. In your "System Tray" (in the TaskBar, with your audio volume control, SuSE updates icon, etc. you get a flag icon. Click on that to cycle through keyboard layouts. A a little experimentation showed that most alphabetic keys are the same as U.S. English, but the extra characters appear to the right of the P key and the L key, like: š, Š, đ, Đ, č, Č, ć, Ć. The ž and Ž are on the U.S. backslash key. Hey hey! I don't know if these characters will come through to you in this email, but it works very nicely for me locally. Cheers, Cris
On Tuesday 12 October 2004 20:19, Cris Perdue wrote:
Thanks everyone for your information and suggestions on entering eastern European characters. I looked at the facilities you all referred me to and followed the trail a bit further. The keymaps facility is pretty difficult to work with from my point of view, and kcharselect does not seem to exist as an executable program in my SUSE9.1 system, but I did find a pretty useable facility right in KDE. (Gee, should I be surprised?)
In the KDE Control Center, under "Regional & Accessibility", choose "Keyboard Layout". Check the box to "Enable keyboard layouts", then add one or more _additional_ layouts beyond your normal one. I chose "Bosnian", though Croatian or Serbian (Latin) would probably have been
Ok, so you told KDE that you have a Bosnian keyboard, while in reality you have a US keyboard?
as good. Click "Apply" and you are in business. In your "System Tray" (in the TaskBar, with your audio volume control, SuSE updates icon, etc. you get a flag icon. Click on that to cycle through keyboard layouts. A a little experimentation showed that most alphabetic keys are the same as U.S. English, but the extra characters appear to the right of the P key and the L key, like: š, Š, đ, Đ, č, Č, ć, Ć. The ž and Ž are on the U.S. backslash key. Hey hey!
I don't know if these characters will come through to you in this email, but it works very nicely for me locally.
It depends on the font you're using. I use GNU unifont Mono in the Message Body and the letters showed up perfectly in the Message Body. However in the Composer, where I at first used Courier 10 Pitch, only the š, Š, ž, and Ž letters where shown. The others where shown as blanks. Fortunately they did show up after I had changed the font to GNU unifont Mono too. Cheers, Leen
Hi Chris, Please answer to the list, so everybody can follow this conversation. :) On Tuesday 12 October 2004 21:12, Leendert Meyer wrote:
On Tuesday 12 October 2004 20:19, Cris Perdue wrote:
In the KDE Control Center, under "Regional & Accessibility", choose "Keyboard Layout". Check the box to "Enable keyboard layouts", then add one or more _additional_ layouts beyond your normal one. I chose "Bosnian", though Croatian or Serbian (Latin) would probably have been
Ok, so you told KDE that you have a Bosnian keyboard, while in reality you have a US keyboard?
On Tuesday 12 October 2004 21:35, Cris Perdue wrote:
Yes, I asked for Bosnian layout though my keyboard is laid out US-style.
If you're happy with this, than it's ok. :) You can also add another keyboard layout: US with dead keys, and use the dead keys (^, ", ', `, ~) to make Bosnian characters. Than you can try what works best for you. It seems a bit confusing to me that you have to remember that the '['-key produces š, and the ']'-key produces đ, and so on... But like I said: if you're happy with this, than it's ok. :)
Thanks for the feedback on fonts. I appreciate it.
You're welcome. 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.
*** Reply to message from Volker Kuhlmann
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?
IF you actually have one of the fonts installed you can use kcharSelect you spell out the word or phrase you want, once you have found the font and tell it to copy to clipboard ... after that a cntrol + V will paste it into your message.. or it should do.. might depend on the font you select for that as well I guess... oh yeah, KcharSelect is on the kmenu under utilities, desktop then a menu comes out w/ severl things on it , one of which *should* be KcharSelect .. <G> -- j -- nemo me impune lacessit
IF you actually have one of the fonts installed you can use kcharSelect
Yes it would work, but doing this twice per word for 3 words of each sentence (and ^V only holds one character, and it's not the one you need just now) is even more of a bad joke for continuous use... Most normal text fonts should have these chracters these days. Or rather, a stock SuSE install should give you the characters for the usual ISO8859 latin-N range except for Cyrillic and Greek. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
participants (4)
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Cris Perdue
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jfweber@bellsouth.net
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Leendert Meyer
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Volker Kuhlmann