Re: Occasional texts in languages other than English
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 On 2004-02-15 20:32, Bruce Miller wrote: I am looking for the simplest way to enter non-English characters from an English keyboard (e.g. ). In Windows, it was never hard; there are few enough that I usually remembered the Alt+nnn keycode for the 437 and 850 codepages. For longer texts, the WordPerfect (Ctrl-w) function was also dead easy. Rarely, I switched to another keyboard layout and kept the layout diagram propped open in front of me. add kcharselect to your panel it's made for this. What I am looking for is something comparable to the old ALt+nnn (where n is the numerical keypad) method. If there is nothing, I will switch keyboard layouts. I now keep that old Microsoft manual close to my, ouch, Linux computer. - -- Cheers, cobaco 1. Encrypted mail preferred (GPG KeyID: 0x86624ABB) 2. Plain-text mail recommended since I move html and double format mails to a low priority folder (they're mainly spam) -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFAMIk55ihPJ4ZiSrsRAqHtAJ4upoi2HHrNDFLo2inaJK5o2kFFYwCcDdjP xGDUAwsq/wFRH9vEVlGeAyI= =R7lQ -END PGP SIGNATURE-
Occasional texts in languages other than English
I have many friends whose first language is not English. Most are quite relaxed about polglotism: they write to me in their first language, and I reply in mine (English). Sometimes, however, I need to write in their language. I have been too busy learning the other mechanics of Linux to worry about non-English characters. Changing national keyboard layouts is a surprising hassle, not in software terms but from the user perspective. It is many years since I lived outside Canada and I no longer recall how layouts differ from language to language and from country to country. I spent fruitless hours last year hunting for examples on the Web before I swallowed my pride and hauled out an old Microsoft manual grin which I already knew had all the layouts I needed neatly laid out in an appendix. Nor am I willing to give up my ancient but treasured Nothgate keyboards which, being from the USA, have stolidly unilingual keycaps. My locale is en_CA_UTF8. I am looking for the simplest way to enter non-English characters from an English keyboard (e.g. ). In Windows, it was never hard; there are few enough that I usually remembered the Alt+nnn keycode for the 437 and 850 codepages. For longer texts, the WordPerfect (Ctrl-w) function was also dead easy. Rarely, I switched to another keyboard layout and kept the layout diagram propped open in front of me. What I am looking for is something comparable to the old ALt+nnn (where n is the numerical keypad) method. If there is nothing, I will switch keyboard layouts. I now keep that old Microsoft manual close to my, ouch, Linux computer.
Re: Occasional texts in languages other than English
* Bruce Miller [Sun, 15 Feb 2004 14:32:01 -0500]: I am looking for the simplest way to enter non-English characters from an English keyboard (e.g. ). In Windows, it was never hard; there are few enough that I usually remembered the Alt+nnn keycode for the 437 and 850 codepages. For longer texts, the WordPerfect (Ctrl-w) function was also dead easy. Rarely, I switched to another keyboard layout and kept the layout diagram propped open in front of me. I think that, if the number of non-English characters is low (which seems to be the case, since you'd accept Alt+nnn) a very convenient approach can be the use of the Multi Key. (I don't know where it may be in a Canadian keyboard but in my Spanish layout, the default X11 symbols assign it to Shift+Ralt = Shift+AltGr.) It works very simply: = MultiKey, o, a = MultiKey, ', e = MultiKey, ^, u I use commas to separate keys since they are to be typed sequentially, rather than at once. There must be also somewhere a list of composites, but is rather intuitive (ou = , a = , `i = , ae = , etc.) HTH. -- Adeodato Sim (a.k.a. thibaut) EM: asp16 [ykwim] alu.ua.es | IM: my_dato [jabber.org] | PK: DA6AE621 The reader this message encounters not failing to understand is cursed. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Occasional texts in languages other than English
On Sun, Feb 15, 2004 at 02:32:01PM -0500, Bruce Miller wrote: I have many friends whose first language is not English. Most are quite relaxed about polglotism: they write to me in their first language, and I reply in mine (English). Sometimes, however, I need to write in their language. I have been too busy learning the other mechanics of Linux to worry about non-English characters. Changing national keyboard layouts is a surprising hassle, not in software terms but from the user perspective. It is many years since I lived outside Canada and I no longer recall how layouts differ from language to language and from country to country. I spent fruitless hours last year hunting for examples on the Web before I swallowed my pride and hauled out an old Microsoft manual grin which I already knew had all the layouts I needed neatly laid out in an appendix. Nor am I willing to give up my ancient but treasured Nothgate keyboards which, being from the USA, have stolidly unilingual keycaps. My locale is en_CA_UTF8. I am looking for the simplest way to enter non-English characters from an English keyboard (e.g.å é û ). In Windows, it was never hard; there are few enough that I usually remembered the Alt+nnn keycode for the 437 and 850 codepages. For longer texts, the WordPerfect (Ctrl-w) function was also dead easy. Rarely, I switched to another keyboard layout and kept the layout diagram propped open in front of me. What I am looking for is something comparable to the old ALt+nnn (where n is the numerical keypad) method. If there is nothing, I will switch keyboard layouts. I now keep that old Microsoft manual close to my, ouch, Linux computer. Adding to what Adeodato Simó said: (This someone told me a few days ago) In emacs, M-x iso-accents-mode and then /a will give you å, ~c will give you ç, etcétera. See http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/emacs-iso.html To enable what you want for anything, not only emacs, you have to create your own «xmodmap», here is where you incorporate what Adeodato said. man xkeycaps, man xmodmap Use xkeycaps to see your keyboard layout, as initial approach. Save it (see the man pages) to some file. Modifye then the saved file to your taste. For example, I am copying next my xmodmap: ! ! This is an `xmodmap' input file for ! PC 104 key, wide Delete, short Enter (XFree86; US) keyboards. ! Automatically generated on Wed Oct 29 19:35:53 2003 by tony with ! XKeyCaps 2.46; Copyright (c) 1999 Jamie Zawinski [EMAIL PROTECTED]. ! http://www.jwz.org/xkeycaps/ ! ! This file makes the following changes: ! ! The Print Screen key generates Print and Sys_Req ! The =/+/ key generates Super_L ! The Alt key generates Alt_L and Meta_L ! The Alt key generates Alt_R and Meta_R ! The =/+/ key generates Super_R keycode 0x09 = Escape keycode 0x43 = F1 keycode 0x44 = F2 keycode 0x45 = F3 keycode 0x46 = F4 keycode 0x47 = F5 keycode 0x48 = F6 keycode 0x49 = F7 keycode 0x4A = F8 keycode 0x4B = F9 keycode 0x4C = F10 keycode 0x5F = F11 keycode 0x60 = F12 keycode 0x6F = dead_tilde dead_cedilla keycode 0x4E = guillemotleft guillemotright keycode 0x6E = Pause Break keycode 0x31 = grave asciitilde keycode 0x0A = 1 exclam keycode 0x0B = 2 at keycode 0x0C = 3 numbersign keycode 0x0D = 4 dollar keycode 0x0E = 5 percent keycode 0x0F = 6 asciicircum keycode 0x10 = 7 ampersand keycode 0x11 = 8 asterisk keycode 0x12 = 9 parenleft keycode 0x13 = 0 parenright keycode 0x14 = minus underscore keycode 0x15 = equal plus keycode 0x16 = BackSpace keycode 0x6A = Insert keycode 0x61 = Home keycode 0x63 = Prior keycode 0x4D = Num_LockPointer_EnableKeys keycode 0x70 = KP_Divide keycode 0x3F = KP_Multiply keycode 0x52 = KP_Subtract keycode 0x17 = Tab ISO_Left_Tab keycode 0x18 = q Q keycode 0x19 = w W keycode 0x1A = e E keycode 0x1B = r R keycode 0x1C = t T keycode 0x1D = y Y keycode 0x1E = u U keycode 0x1F = i I keycode 0x20 = o O keycode 0x21 = p P keycode 0x22 = bracketleft braceleft keycode 0x23 = bracketrightbraceright keycode 0x33 = backslash bar keycode 0x6B = Delete keycode 0x67 = End keycode 0x69 = Next keycode 0x4F = KP_Home KP_7 keycode 0x50 = KP_Up KP_8 keycode 0x51 = KP_PriorKP_9 keycode 0x56 = KP_Add keycode 0x42 = Caps_Lock keycode 0x26 = a A keycode 0x27 = s S keycode 0x28 = d D keycode 0x29 = f F keycode 0x2A = g G keycode 0x2B = h H keycode 0x2C = j J keycode 0x2D = k K keycode 0x2E = l L keycode
Re: [oclug] Occasional texts in languages other than English
On February 15, 2004 16:09, Kevin Everets wrote: Under X-windows, there is a more intuitive setup but it is not (often) the default. First, you assign some key to be your Multi_key, which is often assigned to be the right Alt key. To do so, create a file called multikey.map which contains just the line: keycode 113 = Multi_key then, run xmodmap multikey.map to make this compose key active. Once that's done, you can just hit Right-Alt, then an accent (such as '), then the letter (such as e) to get something like ?? (which might show up as an e with an accent on it). Merci pour ton conseil. Ça marche à merveille mais pas tout à fait. Tack för ditt förslag. Det fungerar nästan utmärkt. Thanks for the suggestion. It works superbly --- with only one small problem. My third language is Swedish and I haven't yet found the Scandinavian å --- a-circle, which, in older texts, in sometimes printed as a double aa.
Re: [oclug] Occasional texts in languages other than English
* Bruce Miller [Sun, 15 Feb 2004 16:36:05 -0500]: Thanks for the suggestion. It works superbly --- with only one small problem. My third language is Swedish and I haven't yet found the Scandinavian å --- a-circle, which, in older texts, in sometimes printed as a double aa. As appears in the post I made to debian-kde (but I forgot to send you a copy) å = MultiKey, o, a. -- Adeodato Simó (a.k.a. thibaut) EM: asp16 [ykwim] alu.ua.es | IM: my_dato [jabber.org] | PK: DA6AE621 Listening to: Cánovas, Rodrigo, Adolfo y Guzmán - Señora azul When it is not necessary to make a decision, it is necessary not to make a decision. signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: [oclug] Occasional texts in languages other than English
Thanks to everyone for your help. Merci à tous pour vos conseils. Tack till alla för ert hjälp. Takk till alle for Deres hjelp. etc.
