Dear OpenSolaris friends, I recently installed Nevada 69 and Solaris 5.10 as a test for a couple of new x86 desktop users (I know, 5.10 is off topic here, but please read on). Since my desktop users write in the Dutch language, they can't "just" use the US keyboard layout. Therefore I made some generic adjustments to the original us file to make life easy for a Dutch desktop user. The preferred keyboard layouts are now advertised by the Xorg-server through Option "XkbLayout" "us,altgr-intl"; choosing the right layout with the Gnome Keyboard Indicator works fine in Solaris 5.10.
The Gnome Keyboard Indicator, however, will be phased out in future releases (in Nevada it is already gone) and Input Methods is the supposed new way to go. Now here comes the question: why is Input Methods so poorly documented? There is "some" topic about it in Gnome Yelp, but for a sysadmin who wants to begin getting a grasp on this matter, this is clearly not enough. Where can I find the proper documentation about how Input Methods, IIIMF and XIM work in Nevada, without having to work through piles of project- and API documentation or in-depth discussions about specialized details concerning the development of Input Methods? The way Input Methods is implemented (and presented to the public) now raises too many questions, because it is not easy to get it to work as it is supposed to. I bump into simple beginners-questions like: - Why don't I get these nice Input Method popup's in the applications, while others get them without asking for it? - How is it organized to get this working in StarOffice? - What is the exact difference between Input Methods "Default", "X Input Method" and "Internet/Intranet Input Method" (only in "Default" things work through the standard Compose key input method eg. Compose + e + ' = ?) . What do I have to do to get this all working as it is supposed to? - Where does the keyboard and language information in the left window in Languages/Scripts in the Preference Editor come from: does the Preference Editor look into an existing directory like /usr/X11/lib/X11/xkb/symbols, or into some file with meta-data, like the Gnome Keyboard Indicator does? - Which for me comes down to: How can I get my own keyboard layouts in the Preference Editor? - Why is XIM (/usr/bin/iiimx -iiimd) not defined as an SMF service? It doesn't run when starting the machine up. - Is Input Methods supposed to work in all window managers and desktops? If not: why not? - I thought Input Methods were also meant to be working from the commandline? - Why not give us back the old setxkbmap.... :-) Can anyone provide me the magic link about "working with Input Methods" that I missed during endless googling the last few days? I work on Nevada 5.11 Builds 67 and 69, Sun Solaris 5.10-upgr.4 x86 32Bit. All the latest Updates are installed. TIA & kind regards, Alge This message posted from opensolaris.org
