Re: dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration (Swedish with "|")
On Sun 05 May 2019 at 20:52:40 (+0200), Erik Josefsson wrote:
> Den 2019-05-05 kl. 16:26, skrev David Wright:
> > Is this some sort of ticking off for wondering why the OP is*so*
> > keen to be able to type ¦ directly on the keyboard that they are
> > almost willing to use a USB keyboard with a laptop to get it?
> > Particularly as the wiki page referred to above has a reference to
> > http://jkorpela.fi/latin1/3.html#A6
> > which states "It is advisable to avoid using this character, since its
> > code position is occupied by another character in ISO Latin 9 (alias
> > ISO 8859-15), which will probably widely replace ISO Latin 1 at least
> > in European usage."
> >
> > Now, using Unicode might avoid this danger, but it's still odd to
> > want this character so much when it appears to be as much of a relic
> > as the aforementioned ECU is. And, after all, the answer is that
> > they didn't.
>
> For what it's worth, I had the foggy idea that I had to figure out how
> to make the Teres keyboard reproduce the output from the Scandinavian
> USB keyboard. What else would be "right"?
[Disclaimer: I'm not familiar with the Teres keyboard beyond looking at
https://www.olimex.com/Products/DIY-Laptop/SPARE-PARTS/TERES-006-Keyboard/
(assuming this is it), and I've no idea of what keys your USB keyboard
has, nor knowledge of Swedish keyboard conventions.]
> When the 105 and 102 options then gave the same result, it got
> completely lost.
>
> And I'm still kind of lost since I don't really understand what a
> "Keyboard model" is. So already at the first menu choice of
> dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration I don't really know what I'm
> doing there.
>
> In the dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration menu there are [193
> different keyboard models] to choose from.
>
> But two of them are the same, at least from the point of view of a
> Teres laptop.
>
> How does that work?
I guess that with only 80 keys on your keyboard, many of the
differences between these different models are dealing with keys you
simply don't have. I can use pc105 for all my laptop, however many
keys they have.
What's more important is the layout: for example a British layout
puts \| left of z, whereas a US one will make that key <> and the
\| will be 3 keys right of p. In response to that, and deleting
£, many of the other punctuation characters get shuffled around.
The "key that's missing" usually refers to that left-of-z key,
(i) because the fact that it's the only punctuation character
thereabouts makes it rather obvious that it's missing, (ii) small
US keyboards don't have it whereas British (and I assume many
European) ones usually do.
You mentioned your Scandinavian USB keyboard with it's "broken bar"
in that left-of-z position. The "broken" appearance has been a
traditional engraving on the pipe keycap for years and doesn't
have any particular significance significance: the key produces
pipe when typed normally (ie shifted).
I don't know how they decide which glyphs should be typed when
the AltGr key is used. Perhaps it's not too surprising that they
place ¦ on the | key as a mnemonic. To what end, who knows? The
glyph is virtually useless. But what does your USB keyboard produce
when you type this key with just shift pressed?
Cheers,
David.
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