Re: Finnish X11 keymap on iMac?
On Wed, 13 Aug 2003, Frank Murphy wrote:
> > Having just substituted the original narrow iMac keyboard with an
> > after-market keyboard, largely because that original keyboard appears
> > unsupported by X11, I find that the Finnish XFree keymap still fails;
> > several keys are where they should not be. I tried the normal i386 keymap,
> > which also fails, presumably because the stock Debian PPC kernel is
> > configured to look for Mac scancodes.
>
> They used to, but for Debian 3.0 (woody), PPC emits the standard keycodes
> (unless you've configured something different). For you, this is not the
> problem, but for more info, see: http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/keycodes
Noted. So this indeed not the problem here.
> > This is really beginging to piss me off, as the console-data maps are
> > perfect: if I use the i386 keymap, I get the exact same deadkeys, etc. as
> > i386 hardware; if I instead use the mac-usb-fi, all keys also work, but
> > metakeys and deadkeys end up where Mac users would expect them e.g. the @
> > symnbol is at a different location than on the i386 map. Anyhow, both i386
> > and Mac Finnish keymaps work, exactly as expected, on the console, using
> > _any_ damn USB keyboard I throw at it, including the original narrow iMac
> > keyboard.
> >
> > My question: is there any way to make X11 use the console-data keymaps,
> > instead of wasting time trying to hack X11's abyssimal keymap system into
> > something that might be remotely usable by non-American users on non-i386
> > hardware?
>
> Unfortunately, no. The two mappings are different beasts (and X allows
> per-user modifications, while the console doesn't). The modifier keys should
> be mappable, but then what happens on <shift>+1 is a different thing.
>
> Your third-party keyboard should be considered an i386 keyboard, and the Apple
> keyboard a mac-usb one. The differences there are the locations of the @,
> which seems to work fine for you.
Mainly that and that the Apple/Windows keys and Alt keys are reverted, then the
Euro sign appears on AltGr+E of PC (as per EU recommendations), while Mac has
this instead of the Universal currency on Shift+4. Also the <>| and §½¶ keys
are at the wrong location.
> From before, it seems that the keyboard(s) work fine for the keys with letters
> on them. The problem is that AltGr (Mode_switch in Xkb-speak) is not doing
> what it should.
The incorrect keys are: Alt, AltGr, left_apple/windows, right_apple/windows
(bottom row). Then, on two third-part keyboards that I tried (Macalley and some
other no-name) the <>| (should be between Z and left_shift) and §½¶ (should be
left of 1) are reverted.
> Before, you had said the following:
>
> > On a Finnish/Swedish early iMac with the narrow USB keyboard, xev says:
> >
> > Control_L,Alt_L,Super_L,space,Multikey.
> >
> > What it should be (as far as Mac OS keymaps and console-tools go):
> >
> > Control_L,Mode_switch,Alt_L,space,(?).
>
> I haven't seen a Finnish keyboard, but I assume that the keys are physically
> marked with "ctrl", "alt & option", "Apple-logo/command", "space bar",
> "Multikey". Is this true?
They are: ctrl, alt/option, apple, spacebar, apple.
> Does putting the following into .Xmodmap and run xmodmap .Xmodmap help?
>
> keysym Alt_L = Mode_switch
> keysym Super_L = Alt_L Meta_L
Using xmodmap messes up WAY too many other things in the keymap, such as killing
deadkeys, which I absolutely need.
> Are your only problems with the AltGr functionality?
They are not. See above.
What really puzzles me is, why setting up X to use a real i386/latin1-fi keymap
fails to give me the exact same layout as on my Intel hardware. Aren't USB
keyboards so standardized that they should be virtualy interchangeable?
--
Martin-Éric Racine
http://www.pp.fishpool.fi/~q-funk/
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