Re: French-Canadian Keyboard & keyboard switching

On Fri, 01 May 2009 09:11:02 -0400 PJ wrote:
Boris Samorodov wrote:
On Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:04:34 -0400 PJ wrote:

Tijl Coosemans wrote:

On Wednesday 29 April 2009 15:20:34 PJ wrote:

Cool. Then I can ask some questions regarding all of this.

rc.conf: (snipped to show the relevant entries)
font8x16="iso15-8x16"
font8x14="iso15-8x14"
font8x8="iso15-8x8"
allscreens_flags="VGA_80x60 cyan"
rpcbind_enable="YES"
mountd_flags="-r"
nfs_client_enable="YES"
nfs_client_flags="-n 4"
samba_enable="YES"
cupsd_enable="YES"
apache22_enable="YES"
postgresql_enable="YES"
mysql_enable="YES"
webmin_enable="YES"
#keymap=fr_CA.iso.acc.kbd

Question:
1. the font entries? The /usr/share/syscons/fonts/ entry has suffixes
of .fnt - ???

Your font and keymap settings are ok. The extensions can be omitted.
See the EXAMPLES sections in vidcontrol(1) and kbdcontrol(1).


2. the keymap is commented out because, although it gives me the
fr_CA keyboard, it also uses French messages which are a bit tortured
(French courtly affectations in the language are quaint but also make
for long and convoluted terminology - notice that a text translated
to French is always longer). K.I.S.S.

Keyboard settings shouldn't affect message localisation. Do you set
the environment variable LANG in ~/.login_conf or in a shell startup
script (.profile or .cshrc or other depending on the shell)? If so,
set it to en_CA.ISO8859-15 or something. From q5 below I think you've
currently set it to fr_CA.utf-8.


No answer. Which locale do you use?

default us

xorg.conf: (snip for relevant)
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0
InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
Option "AllowEmptyInput" "off"


Seems that you use new X stuff. X11@ and gnome@ maillist archieves may
give you some additional information.


EndSection

Section "Files"
ModulePath "/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules"
FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"


Unless I add cyrillic fonts, I'm not able to see cyrillic
letters at xterm for my utf-8 locale.


FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
FontPath "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "extmod"
Load "record"
Load "dbe"
Load "glx"
Load "GLcore"
Load "xtrap"
Load "dri"
Load "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"

This might have to be pc105, but it probably doesn't matter.


Option "XkbLayout" "us,ca"

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#QWERTY

[2]

If you have Canadian Multilingual Standard, this option needs to be set
to "ca(multi)". If you have Canadian French, set it to "ca" or
"ca(fr)".

This does not set it to the Canadian French; nor can I find anything
that does... only my lame setup works using the French azerty (which is
rather a pain because it involves complicated finger moves to get the
accented characters - I'm familiar with it and can use it; it's just a pita.


Phil, you didn't say which keyboard do you use and which options you
have tried.

Anyway, you may look at /usr/local/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst [1]
for options that can be used at xorg.conf for keyboards.

And you may be interested in looking at /var/log/Xorg.0.log.
There are many useful diagnistics at this file.

Option "XkbOptions" "grp:toggle"

If you don't need layout switching just delete this.

I guess I wasn't clear. Toggling was meant to mean switching back and
forth; switching - just once. I would like to use switching but it seems
to only work one way. Can't switch back. rtAlt switches from us to the
ca (which oddly seems to mean French, but nothing to do with Canadian or
French Canadian. Only fluxbox brings it back and then rtAlt no longer
works. Weird.
Any idea where the documentation is for this?
The man page is rather foggy and has no mention of XkbOptions or
XkbLayout or anything about "grp:toggle"


Looking at [1] should help.


HTH & WBR

Hi, Boris,
Thanks much for your input. I looked at all the possibilities, like the
profile, login.conf files, logs, google and have finally configured all
as I like. Everything works fine...
EXCEPT - it is impossible to install a French-Canadian keyboard/keymap
(without creating one - and I'm not about to get into that) on xorg
(with fluxbox as wm)
As I just responded to Tijl Goosemans, the true French Canadian keyboard
produces the most common accented characters with one keystroke; the
French or old Fr-Canadian uses 2 keystrokes. I can assure you because I

Does that mead that your keyboard is not shown at wiki [2]?

am typing on that keyboard right now. I switch between us & fr_ca with
ShiftAlt. the key to the right of the p/P key is used to create the
circumfex (lowercase) in conjunction with a vowel or umlaut (uppercase).

Did you look at [1]? There are some tree variants for canadian
multilingual keyboards: multix, multi, multi-2gr. May be this
may help you.

In Xorg, the toggle/switching is set with Option "XkbOptions"
"grp:alt_shift_toggle" or just alt or shift, I think. Also you can list
several languages, like "us,ru,es,fr" and switch from one to the next
(haven't tried, but I think it works); and "CoreKeyboard" must have a
boolean option set - either yes or no - "yes" works for me. I suppose
you could enter true/false, but I haven't tried. No need.

BTW, may be another mail list (x11@) may give you some more
experienced eyes to help you.


WBR
--
Boris Samorodov (bsam)
Research Engineer, http://www.ipt.ru Telephone & Internet SP
FreeBSD Committer, http://www.FreeBSD.org The Power To Serve
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