Re: unicode input in X apps: how to?

From: James Miller (jamtat_at_mailsnare.net)
Date: 09/30/04

  • Next message: Marion Hall: "RE: Newbie trying to install Soundcard on Debian Linux" 
    Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 10:34:37 -0500 (CDT)
To: Tony Harlequin <gnuruandstuff@yahoo.co.uk>

    On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Tony Harlequin wrote:

    > Then you'll need the cyrillic fonts, I don't use
    > cyrillic myself, but try searching for cyrillic fonts
    > and install:
    >
    > apt-get install xfonts-efont-unicode
    > apt-get install xfonts-efont-unicode-ib

    I did install some Cyrillic console fonts and got them working, even
    though I really foresee little or no need to type Cyrillic in a console.
    I thought that might help solve the other problem (phonetic keyboard
    layout) that I'll get into below. But for now, I should mention that,
    reading the file README.config in /etc/X11/xkb got me some helpful
    information. There, I found the following:
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Let's say you want to configure your new Logitech cordless desktop
    keyboard, you intend to use three different layouts at the same time - us,
    czech and german (in this order), and that you are used to Alt-Shift
    combination for switching among them. Then the configuration snippet
    could look like this:

    Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Keyboard1"
    Driver "Keyboard"
    Option "XkbModel" "logicordless"
    Option "XkbLayout" "us,cz,de"
    Option "XKbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
    EndSection
    --------------------------------------------------------------

    I tried editing my XF86Config-4 like this - changing "us,cz,de" to
    "us,ru,el" to suit my needs, of course - and, sure enough, on restating X
    I was able to use the alt-shift key combination to toggle between keyboard
    mappings and to type some phrases in Russian and Greek in OOo! This seems
    to approach success. I should note that it seems that entering any
    commands to the root terminal like "setxkbmap whatever" somehow nullifies
    the hot keys subsequently: you lose the ability to toggle between
    keyboards with alt-shift after this. I should mention that the above
    XF86Config-4 edit applies to the latest XFree86 release (4.3.0 something)
    and may not work with earlier ones.

    > > thus far without success: any suggestions on finding
    > > where their names
    > > might be listed?
    >
    > Again I don't use cyrillic so I can only give you a
    > few pointers. Emacs lists the following possible
    > names for cyrillic keyboards:
    >
    > cyrillic-beylorussian
    > cyrillic-jcuken
    > cyrillic-jis-russian
    > cyrillic-macedonian
    > cyrillic-serbian
    > cyrillic-translit cyrillic-translit-bulgarian
    > cyrillic-ukrainian
    > cyrillic-yawerty
    >
    > I'm not sure that will help (I know my girlfriend
    > likes cyrillic-yawerty for her Russian homework :) )
    >
    > As for X the keyboards, they are all in /etc/X11/xkbd
    >
    > The ones I have listed are ru, ge_ru and ru_yawerty.
    > You might find more if you do apt-cache search.

    I think that's /etc/X11/xkb, is it not? At least that's what I have on my
    system. Anyway, although I can pass successfully the command "setxkbmap
    ru_yawerty" (no error messages appear in the xterm) I don't get any
    Russian font. Looking at stdout I see an error message something like
    "Can't find file pc/ru_yawerty for symbols include Exiting." So, somehow
    this ru_yawerty seems not to be on the system, or not in the place
    expected. I've installed some Cyrillic X fonts (as you've suggested, but
    also some additional ones) in hopes it would resolve this. I also
    installed a couple of packages that came up when I searched under the
    term "yawerty." So I have no idea why this phonetic keyboard map seems to
    be missing or is unuseable. Do you (or does anyone else)?

    > Also, it seems that if you use the Gnome desktop all
    > this keyboard switching is easier, me I use
    > WindowMaker.

    No such luck, I'm afraid. Seems XFree86 in unstable is somehow broken: I
    get an error message when trying to use the Gnome interface's keyboard
    switcher to that effect. It tells me to get a newer release, but since
    I'm doing apt-get dist-upgrade frequently, I already have the newest
    release.

    Thanks for your input. Maybe this discussion could benefit someone else?

    James 

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