Re: unicode input in X apps: how to?
On Thu, 30 Sep 2004, Tony Harlequin wrote:
> Then you'll need the cyrillic fonts, I don't use
> cyrillic myself, but try searching for cyrillic fonts
> and install:
>
> apt-get install xfonts-efont-unicode
> apt-get install xfonts-efont-unicode-ib
I did install some Cyrillic console fonts and got them working, even
though I really foresee little or no need to type Cyrillic in a console.
I thought that might help solve the other problem (phonetic keyboard
layout) that I'll get into below. But for now, I should mention that,
reading the file README.config in /etc/X11/xkb got me some helpful
information. There, I found the following:
----------------------------------------------------------
Let's say you want to configure your new Logitech cordless desktop
keyboard, you intend to use three different layouts at the same time - us,
czech and german (in this order), and that you are used to Alt-Shift
combination for switching among them. Then the configuration snippet
could look like this:
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "logicordless"
Option "XkbLayout" "us,cz,de"
Option "XKbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
EndSection
--------------------------------------------------------------
I tried editing my XF86Config-4 like this - changing "us,cz,de" to
"us,ru,el" to suit my needs, of course - and, sure enough, on restating X
I was able to use the alt-shift key combination to toggle between keyboard
mappings and to type some phrases in Russian and Greek in OOo! This seems
to approach success. I should note that it seems that entering any
commands to the root terminal like "setxkbmap whatever" somehow nullifies
the hot keys subsequently: you lose the ability to toggle between
keyboards with alt-shift after this. I should mention that the above
XF86Config-4 edit applies to the latest XFree86 release (4.3.0 something)
and may not work with earlier ones.
> > thus far without success: any suggestions on finding
> > where their names
> > might be listed?
>
> Again I don't use cyrillic so I can only give you a
> few pointers. Emacs lists the following possible
> names for cyrillic keyboards:
>
> cyrillic-beylorussian
> cyrillic-jcuken
> cyrillic-jis-russian
> cyrillic-macedonian
> cyrillic-serbian
> cyrillic-translit cyrillic-translit-bulgarian
> cyrillic-ukrainian
> cyrillic-yawerty
>
> I'm not sure that will help (I know my girlfriend
> likes cyrillic-yawerty for her Russian homework :) )
>
> As for X the keyboards, they are all in /etc/X11/xkbd
>
> The ones I have listed are ru, ge_ru and ru_yawerty.
> You might find more if you do apt-cache search.
I think that's /etc/X11/xkb, is it not? At least that's what I have on my
system. Anyway, although I can pass successfully the command "setxkbmap
ru_yawerty" (no error messages appear in the xterm) I don't get any
Russian font. Looking at stdout I see an error message something like
"Can't find file pc/ru_yawerty for symbols include Exiting." So, somehow
this ru_yawerty seems not to be on the system, or not in the place
expected. I've installed some Cyrillic X fonts (as you've suggested, but
also some additional ones) in hopes it would resolve this. I also
installed a couple of packages that came up when I searched under the
term "yawerty." So I have no idea why this phonetic keyboard map seems to
be missing or is unuseable. Do you (or does anyone else)?
> Also, it seems that if you use the Gnome desktop all
> this keyboard switching is easier, me I use
> WindowMaker.
No such luck, I'm afraid. Seems XFree86 in unstable is somehow broken: I
get an error message when trying to use the Gnome interface's keyboard
switcher to that effect. It tells me to get a newer release, but since
I'm doing apt-get dist-upgrade frequently, I already have the newest
release.
Thanks for your input. Maybe this discussion could benefit someone else?
James
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