Re: Cyrillic input in X
On Thu, Nov 19, 1998 at 11:03:19AM -0600, Oleg Krivosheev wrote:
> Yes, xmodmap is one of the solutions.
> The second is xruskb. You can find it in Debian as a package.
>
> But this two solutions are "Nasty hacks (tm)" :)
>
> and what so "nasty" (tm) in xmodmap ? it was quite blessed
> solution till what? X11R6, where Xkb extension was introduced?
Well, with Xkb you use keysyms such as Cyrillic_de or Cyrillic_zhe.
With xmodmap (as a rule!) you use keysyms such as Ediaresis & Co. And it's
not _russian_ characters. It's hack. You give the koi8-r font to the
application and it looks for you as a russian letters. But *they do not*.
Sure that's nice, and i didn't claim that Xkb is bad etc - it's quite good
indeed. Unfirtunately, there is no Russian apps which take any advantage using
Cyrillic_zhe etc, so Xkb doesn't buy us very much. From the other hand
xmodmap and friends are in quite good shape now, that's working solution
blessed by X consortium and not "Nasty hacks (tm)" as you'd like to think...
> And due to backward compatibility xmodmap and friends work just
> fine with X11R6...
>
> The Right Thing - to use Xkb & locale.
>
> Locales are irrelevant to Xkb. I'm using locales with xrus...
Well, but - if you use Xkb - the right tuned locale can help some application
(E.g. Netscape) handle all that Cyrillic_*. W/o russian locale and with Xkb
you cannot enter russian letters in Netscape.
I don't have Xkb and do believe you that's imposible.
Hmm... looks like another Xkb defficiency
> FYI, RH 5(.1) glibc come with russian koi8 locale which is called ru_SU.
Well, why ru_RU.koi8r isn't right?
Don't twist my words, please. I didn's say that ru_RU.koi8r is not right.
*ru*ssian language in *RU*ssia with koi8r
charset. But there is not such thing as a "Soviet Union". Or it's "South Ural" -
as in Fidonet? :+)
What i said was RH came first with koi8r based locales in their
glibc, while Debian yet to do it, so it would be nice for Debian
to be compatible with RH therefore not forcing people to
redo their login/rc scripts.
> It would be nice to be compatible with RH. Second, xrus comes with
> nice icon indicator which changes the bitmap when you're switching languages.
> Keyboard LEDs as indicators are just not good for me (and, i suspect, for lots of
> other people) - i don't like to move my eyes from screen to keyboard.
...so write a little application for catching, e.g., Alt_R and changing the
icon :)
No, i'll wait till people endorsing Xkb write something useful in this regard.
BTW, I do not need keyboard state indicator at all. But some people (they was
using xmodmap before) ask me how to put the indicator on Scroll Lock led :)
I just want to point out another problem which you do not address on your page.
xrus comes to your computer with tons of different keyboard mapping -
jcuken, qwerty etc. Guess what i'm using having Sun keyboard ;)
Any good ways to implement that in Xkb?
OK
ps looks like there are critical mass of Russian-speaking
people having Debian installed. Maybe it's time for
debian-russian (or better, debian-cyrillic) mailing list
where we can discuss all that problems? There is not a good
time to make changes in slink, but we can make potato
a bit more Russian-friendly distribution...
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