On Sun, 17 Mar 2002, Christian Walther wrote:

> I just finished configuring my keyboard to my full contentment, but it
> involved a bit of hacking on which the experts out there might want to
> comment. I'm quite a newbie concerning Linux, so I might have done some
> things in a less-than-optimal way.
> 
>   Loading keymap: mac-de_CH-latin1             [  OK  ]
>   Loading compose keys: compose.latin1.inc     [  OK  ]
>   The BackSpace key sends: ^?                  [FAILED]
> 
> What does this "[FAILED]" mean? I always thought that thing about the
> BackSpace key was an informational message only, how can this fail? This
> happened with the the supplied mac keymaps too, but not when using Linux
> keycodes.
> 

It is supposed to be loading the backspace.inc keycodes:
/usr/lib/kbd/keymaps/i386/include/backspace.inc.gz
/usr/lib/kbd/keymaps/mac/backspace.inc.gz

> 
> Second, X keymap. Sylvain's guide says:
> 
> > in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
> > Option �XkbModel�
> > pc105 (default) : Linux keycodes
> > macintosh : mac keycodes
> > 
> > Option �XkbLayout�
> > xx (default) : keymap for Linux keycodes
> > macintosh/xx : keymap for mac keycodes (is it exists, see
> > /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/macintosh/)
> 
> This is (in my opinion - but I don't understand that whole xkb system very
> well) not entirely correct.
> 
> First, if you are using Linux keycodes, you can use "macintosh" as XkbModel
> as well, because ...xkb/rules/xfree86 maps model "macintosh" to keycodes
> "xfree86". (But this still doesn't give you a fully usable MacOS-like
> keyboard, because the Mac keyboard has no AltGr key and thus you can't reach
> the secondary characters. Also, the Command key doesn't seem to be mapped to
> anything (but I couldn't verify this as I didn't have xev installed).)
> 
> Second, if you are using Mac keycodes, you should not use XkbModel
> "macintosh", but "macintosh_old", because ...xkb/rules/xfree86 maps model
> "macintosh" to keycodes "xfree86" (Linux keycodes) and "macintosh_old" to
> keycodes "macintosh" (Mac keycodes).
> 
> Third, if you specify "macintosh/xx" as XkbLayout, the X server complains
> about not finding "macintosh/macintosh/xx". You just have to use "xx"
> because the "macintosh/" directoy part gets added automatically by
> ...xkb/rules/xfree86.
> 
> Except for those errors, Sylvain's guide was very helpful.
> 
> I made some changes to the supplied ..xkb/symbols/macintosh/de_CH as well to
> make it as faithful as possible to the MacOS keyboard behavior. The most
> important one is that the key that it calls <COIN> (the additional key on
> european keyboards, Mac keycode 18, produces [section, degree] in swiss
> german layout) is actually called <LSGT> (in the keycodes file and in all
> other european symbol files).
> 

If you feel your changes would be useful to others, I could patch the
de_CH file with your mods.

Thanks,
Stew Benedict

-- 
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