Re xkb-data with support for Mac keyboards into unstable
Bonjour Denis,
I have downloaded xkb-data 0.8-14 and played with commands such as:
setxkbmap -rules "xorg" -model "macintosh" -layout "jp,ca" -variant ",multi" -option compose:rwin -option grp:lwin_toggle
I am using an iMac with a Apple A1048 keyboard.
(see http://charles.plessy.org/mac/A1048.html or
http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/images/tn1152_001.gif for
something similar in spirit)
This is a Japanese keyboard, and the default in Debian seems to make it
output japanese syllabic characters (katakanas). While it seems to make
sense, I have to say that I have never seen a japanese person inputing
japanese that way. I think that it would really make sense to make it
output ascii characters by default.
Nevertheless, I checked that the input and output were corrsponding, and
found the following discrepancies:
- The "ro (ろ)" key (code 211) does not input a JIS underscore when
pressed in combination with shift.
- The "mu (む)" key (code 35) outputs "\" or "|" depending wether it is
pressed with shift or not, as if it were from keyboard made for the
USA.
- The comma key of the numeric pad (code 134) does not work at all.
- Also, what is printed on the keyboard is hiragana, not katakanas (they
have a 1 to 1 correspondance, but their apparance differs, for
instance ro and mu are ロ and ム in katakana.
- Lastly, the two keys which are the closest to the spacebar, whose
official name I do not know but guess to be "eigo" and "kana" have no
effect. I guess that they are supposed to do something, such as
swiching between japanese and ascii characters.
The default behaviour of japanese keyboards on most computers running
MS-Windows or Mac OSX is to output ascii characters with a qwerty layout
a bit different from the one used in the USA. This allows to input
translitterated japanese. If you explain me how to activate this (is
there a variant?), I can check wether it reproduces well what is written
on the keys... This is definitely more important than direct "kana"
input, as it gives acces to slashes, pipes, and other vital symbols
under unix. Unfortunately, they are the ones where the USA and japanese
keyboards differ...
Have a nice day,
--
Charles Plessy
http://charles.plessy.org
Wako, Saitama, Japan
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