Bug#248206: deadkeys... Re: Bug#248206: BETA4 beginner installation
On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 10:51:41AM +0200, Christian Perrier wrote:
> > I use "nodeadkeys" in my XF86config(-4) ever since I use X with german
> > keyboards... What are these dead keys good for and where are they found/used
>
> Dead keys are Dead circumflex and Dead trema. See them as keys with
> Compose behaviour. You hit "^", then nothing shows up until you hit
> another key. If this another key may be combined with the "^", then
> you get the circumflexed character:
>
> ^+a then gives â and so on.....
> For German, afaik, you only need those for Umlaute, so for "ö ü" and
> that's all. From memory, german keyboard have these directly, which
> means that dead keys are mostly useless....
German keyboards indeed have umlauts directely. Actually, I am not aware
that you can compose 'üöä' umlauts by using deadkeys.
The only use for deadkeys is when you want to write in a foreign
language like french or spanish on a german keyboard.
This is really a hard case, but at least the term 'Tottasten' should go
away. Soon.
I guess it would be best if a normal installation would not present
deadkeys as an option at all while an expert install would have it.
Don't know if this is possible. It would also be useful to have it when
configuring stuff later on, via dpkg-reconfigure. But in any case, a
better decription would be nice.
What about:
[deutsch] mit deadkeys (z.B. '^' gefolgt von 'e' ergibt ê)?
> Other examples of dead keys are "~" (tilde) and "`" (grave accent)
> keys.....Some keyboard layouts have these as dead keys (for instance,
> the Windows 2000/XF french keyboard has a dead ~ while the linux
> french keymap doesn't).
It would be nice if somebody could research how this is handled
elsewhere. How does Microsoft handle this by default? How does SuSE?
> > I think "deadkeys" should not be translated, "firewire" won't be translated as
> > well ;-)
>
> This is different. In French we definitely translate "dead keys" as
> "touches mortes" (literaly "Tottasten") and I've always heard french
> people speak about "touches mortes".....at least those who know this
> term exists...other simply do no use anything and just type the keys..:-)
>
> So, definitely, "deadkeys" should be translated, IMHO.
Neither 'deadkeys' nor 'tottasten' is known to any computer user in
germany except for Linux people. In fact, the first time I've
encountered the term 'tottasten' was when somebody complained about this
in here, I don't think it's used *anywhere* else.
Michael
--
Michael Banck
Debian Developer
mbanck@debian.org
http://www.advogato.org/person/mbanck/diary.html
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