[debian-knoppix] CA keyboard not available at the shell
From the latest changelog, V3.1-2003-01-01 (Update):
Added keyboard= and xkeyboad= boot option
Though it's not a Knoppix specific matter, I'm afraid this won't make much
difference to Quebec (Canada) users with the CA keyboard.
The CA keyboard is avaiable in X under:
/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/ca
and is easily installed by KDE. Unfortunately, it's not under:
/usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/
and cannot be loaded with loadkeys to be used at the shell. A search with
Google on "ca.kmap.gz" or "ca.map.gz" brought no result. The file for
loadkeys simply doesn't exist. As "everybody uses Windows" (TM) and Microsoft
has relegated the prompt to antiquities, it seems the CSA didn't deem
necessary to produce one.
Is there any way to convert the ca file to a ca.kmap.gz ? (No, unfortunately,
gzipping the file won't do :)
BTW, I'd like to know what people think of their national keyboard layouts.
This new keyboard -- the old one being... CA_enhanced !!! -- for
french-speaking users of Quebec is a mixed blessing: though it allows to type
characters such as à ç è in only one stoke instead of " `" , then "a", the
Canadian Standard Association has deemed necessary to use a second Alt-char
key to write seldom used characters such as {} [] , etc. (This second
Alt-char key introduces a second set of characters on the FRONT !!! of the
keys.)
Fortunately, it's a well known fact that programmers rarely use these
characters :) because with most alt-ernatives still unused, the curly braces
have been set on the (front of the) 6 and 7 keys, right at the top row center
of the keyboard, while the alt-key to produce then is on the bottom row at
the far right. You really need Frankenstein hands to produce curly braces
with just one hand!!
Are people in France, Germany, Sweden, Finland, etc., stuck with such
ridiculous keyboard layouts?
Regards and thanks to Klaus for writing the changelog in english. My German is
more than flaky.
Gilles Pelletier
--
La Masse critique
http://pages.infinit.net/mcrit
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