Re: Frech keyboard with xfree
On Thu, 2004-10-28 at 15:56 +0200, Frank Murphy wrote:
> Well it could be, but it would be very strange, I think. Both
> Mode_switch and ISO_Level3_Shift are like the regular Shift keys. If you
> wanted an Altkey and F to be the "alt modifier" + F to open the File
> menu, but you want an Altkey and N to be Mode_switch + N and generate a
> deadtilde symbol, it would probably be possible, but you would have to
> make substantial changes to the types/ files that would depend heavily
> on the symbols files.
There isn't that much choice here if we want consistent keyboard layout
with MacOS ... Note that XDarwin works fine, but what it does there is
from within X itself (that is, it's code in hw/), it fills the X tables
based on the MacOS keymaps, it seems that those don't have a problem
associating a different glyph for whatever set of modifiers, wether it's
Alt, Meta, etc...
A common practice also on Macs is to reverse the meaning of Alt &
Command (Meta) so that the key labelled "Alt" actually becomes Meta (and
does the combo thing for ~ or | still) and Command (Meta) becomes Alt.
> I think there are two problems here. One is that the traditional
> xlib/xmodmap keymaps and the XKB maps use groups and levels a little bit
> differently (if you are using xmodmap to change third- or fourth-level
> symbols, you're probably confusing XKB).
Ok, I'm not sure what the terminology is ... what are groups & levels ?
I haven't found a doc on xmodmap & xkb...
> The other is the historical
> difference between the Alt_L/Alt_R and Meta_L/Meta_R symbols. Some
> people expect the PC's Altkeys to generate Alt_L/_R and others expect
> Meta_L/_R.
Right, but that could just be an option to have them either way, but in
both way, the same key (the one labelled Alt) should be used for those
combos...
> And add to this that Mac OS users expect the Altkeys to behave like
> Mode_switch or ISO_Level3_Shift to get third symbols, and Windows users
> expect things like Altkey+Tabkey to cycle through windows and it's a
> total mess.
Hehe, well, isn't xkb supposed to be able to make coffee ? :)
> > Looking at the way the Darwin driver works, it just fills the X keymap
> > tables internally with proper translations based on the sets of
> > modifiers, whatever those modifiers are.
> >
> > It's just a matter of understanding XKB syntax, which is beyond my
> > abilities :)
>
> The XKB syntax isn't that bad, but there are a lot of applications
> (including all GTK+ apps, I think) that mix XKB usage and xlib/xmodmap.
Ok.
> There is an XKB keymap project
> (http://freedesktop.org/Software/XKeyboardConfig) with freedesktop.org
> that's trying to make sense of this, but different users have very
> different expectations, so it's hard.
Ok.
Ben.
Reply to: