On Thu, Jul 17, 2003 at 09:45:22PM +0200, Nicolas Mailhot wrote: > > The new unified keyboard is a thing of beauty, but does not seem to take > on swiftly. It removed some of the old stupid azerty/qwerty differences, > and allows rational access to most of the glyphs needed for typing > modern french (I say most because it was written before iso 8859-15 and > thus forgets the Œ/œ glyph and the €).
Is the new unified keyboard available in stores to buy? > I can tell you as a french native living in France it is much better > than french azerty. French uses éèçàùœ«» and typography/grammar rules > require use of accented capes (ÉÈÀÇÙ...). But the french standard is > still stuck in typewriter times and provides *no* direct access to > accented caps... you have to use a word processing program like word > that will auto-replace caps with accented caps when it thinks fit (ie a > lot of people can not actually write texts as they would be found in a > book, newspaper, etc) Yes, it is strange that people still use these awkward keyboards. But it only tells us that keyboards are very hard to change. > Under unix where people want to type correct french in anything from vi > to emacs you need to either learn complex key sequences, import a > canadian keyboard and use the unified layout or use a slightly non > standard layout like fr-latin9 that will add the needed glyphs without > diverging too much from what's actually written in the keyboard commonly > found in France. It's a pity no one bothers to push a new layout for > unix users, because sold keyboards conform to an obsolete "standard" > that is painful but good enough for windows users that have a pirated > word copy sitting on their disk. I am willing to give it a try to create some keyboards that are better for typing eg French. My idea is to build on existing keyboards in the national market, for France that would be the French keyboard. Then The encgravings should be followed, and new mappings could be assigned to keys that are not used. If tere ar dead key accents, these are used to generate the accented letters. I have done some initial work for a number of keyboards, that is I have searched some documentation and consolidated it. It is available at http://std.dkuug.dk/keld/xkb_engravings.html and I would appreciate any error corrections or additions to it. Eg. where is the euro sign placed? The format is very simple, clear mono-spaced text, so that the layouts can be discussed in email. My idea is keeping this documentation clean of extra key assignment, but then have another page that lists these assigments. Here is the contents: Common international engravings on standard PC keybords Ths lists a number of layouts of keyborads for different countries. It is intended to reflect the engravings on the keyboards. Keyboard layout (AltGr-key or right Alt key), left side is unshifted and shifted mode, right side is using the AltGr/Right-Alt key, possibly with Shift: USA ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + ` 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = Q W E R T Y U I O P { } ? [ ] \ A S D F G H J K L ; " : ' Z X C V B N M < > ? , . / France 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ° + ² & é~ "# '{ ([ -| è` _\ ç^ á@ )] =} A Z E R T Y U I O P ? £ ^ $? Q S D F G H J K L M % µ ú * > W X C V B N ? . / § < , ; : ! Germany ° ! " # $ % & / ( ) = ? ` ^ 1 2² 3³ 4 5 6 7{ 8[ 9] 0} ß\ ? Q W E R T Z U I O P Ü * @ +~ A S D F G H J K L Ö Ä ' # > Y X C V B N M ; : ¯ <| µ , . - Latin America: ° ! " # $ % & / ( ) = ? ¡ |¬ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 '\ ¿ Q W E R T Y U I O P ? * @ ' +~ A S D F G H J K L Ñ [ ] {^ }` > Z X C V B N M ; : _ < , . - UK ¬ ! " £ $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + `? 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 - = Q W E R T Y U I O P { } [ ] A S D F G H J K L ; @ ~ : ' # | Z X C V B N M < > ? \ , . / Italy | ! " # $ % & / ( ) = ? ^ \ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 ' ì Q W E R T Y U I O P é * è[ +] A S D F G H J K L ç ° § ò@ à# ù > Z X C V B N M ; : _ < , . - Denmark: § ! " # ? % & / ( ) = ? ` ? 1 2 3£ 4$ 5 6 7{ 8[ 9] 0} + ?? Q W E R T Y U I O P Å ^ ?~ A S D F G H J K L Æ Ø * ' > Z X C V B N M ; : ¯ <\ , . - Norway: § ! " # ? % & / ( ) = ? ` ? 1 2 3£ 4$ 5 6 7{ 8[ 9] 0} + \? Q W E R T Y U I O P Å ^ ?~ A S D F G H J K L Ø Æ * ' > Z X C V B N M ; : ¯ < , . - Sweden and Finland: ? ! " # ? % & / ( ) = ? ` § 1 2@ 3£ 4$ 5 6 7{ 8[ 9] 0} +\ ' Q W E R T Y U I O P Å ^ ?~ A S D F G H J K L Ö Ä * ' > Z X C V B N M ; : _ <| , . - Best regards keld _______________________________________________ I18n mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/i18n
