On Wednesday 20 August 2003 3:04, Kent Karlsson wrote: > I think that first of all "us" (or "en_US") should be handled just like > everyone else. It should have no special status in any way. > Secondly, it is probably better to use a "US extended" keymapping > as the basic "US" keymapping. It should be possible even for naïve > users to type (current) US names like "Cañon" and "San José" without > having to change keyboard layout.
I agree that the us keymap should be handled like any other keymap. It's kinda why I started this whole thing. :) Also, it is currently possible for naïve users to type Latin1 characters. By using Multi_key (mapped to right Windows-logo by default on Debian, at least). I think that this is handled through the widget library on the client side, but I don't know for sure. Multi_key+, followed by c generates ç, and that methodology would need to be taught. A question I have to ask Branden Robinson is why he asked David Dawes to remove the latin1 key symbols from the macintosh/us keymap. (Supposedly, it's got #5386, but I don't know in what system!) > > Using a German keymap doesn't prohibit you from typing in > > English. However, if > > you own a keyboard made for Switzerland, but you set the > > keymap to be German > > (the dominant language here), you won't be able to type the > > characters on > > your keyboard -- like finding the @. Besides novices won't be > > setting this, the administrator will. > > ?? Each user should easily be able to choose which keymapping to > use. It's very easy for anyone to change keymapping on Windows > and on Mac (among the installed/enabled ones). Hence the names > should be cleaned up, so as not to be too confusing. I'd forgotton that, in fact. But it's true that with setxkbmap, a user can (and should be able to) change the xkb map. I would hope that the GUI tools would hide the cryptic filenames and use something easier (like the name[Group1] string). > > For the random ones, dvorak will have to stay > > There are Dvorak layouts also for other languages than English. > E.g. Norwegian and Swedish. I didn't realize. Are they different or are the letter keys the same? If they are, then Xkb could be configured with se+dvorak and avoid all the duplication that would have to happen in each keymap (even if it was just to include dvorak) > > > > This is kind of an odd request and has to do more with > > > > the keycodes than the symbols. But, if all the files distributed with > > > > XFree86 used the new RLGO symbols, then the only problem would > > > > be for users who were doing customisation with xmodmap or who had > > > > their own xkb files that hadn't been sent to XF86 for inclusion. Or > > > > perhaps there's a way to preserve the compatability. > > And use AE00 instead of TLDE... I know that TLDE is not always to the left of the 1, but is the keycode always the same? > The "symbols" files for keyboard layouts should be the same (file) > for SUN, PC, Apple, etc. Differences (which there are some) should be > mediated some other way. > > My tentative scheme for this is as follows: ...(good long-term plan snipped)... > and similarly for SUN and Apple keyboards, handling the > special keys on those keyboard types. ng/keyboard would be > common to all (ng) keyboards. It handles the editing, numeric > and function sections of the keyboard (except for additions > that some keyboard "manufacturers" have). I totally agree. I've been working on an Apple file for just this. > Then in "ng/latinbase": > partial xkb_symbols "common-ZoneA" > (this contains mappings for row E in Zone A; > could possibly be put in the "keyboard(common)" > mapping). What is row E? What is Zone A? > ng/latinbase would be common to all (or almost all) keyboards > that are primarily for the Latin script. I like the idea. While working on my proposal, I thought that a main keymap per script was the way to go. Have a latin, cyrillic, greek, gujarati base, and change from there (qwerty, azerty, etc.). > The idea is then to combine keyboard type (Apple, Sun, MS, ...) and > language mapping; something like "ng/keyboard(apple)+ng/sv(svorak)" > for a Swedish Dvorak mapping on an Apple keyboard. I really like the idea. However, I don't think we can move to fast. I'd prefer to do incremental changes towards something like this. > B.t.w., regarding country codes/language codes, the ISO three-letter > language codes are not really entirely sufficient, given that there are > something like 7000 living languages in the world, and ISO covers only > a fraction of them (plus some historic ones, and group codes as well). > (Maybe not all would get their own keymapping, though.) There are a lot of languages, but with the data we have now (keymaps in XFree CVS) we can only worry about 75 or so. Plus, if ISO can't resolve this, I don't think we can. > And no, keymappings are not for countries, they are for languages, > though there may be some country variation, so names like en-US > (which is a RFC 3066 language tag) are quite appropriate. People have been thinking of these mappings as per country, and in some cases it makes more sense than mapping per language. Here in Switzerland, the keyboard is different than the keyboard in Germany, France, and Italy, and the people use it to type German, French, and English. Adding a different keymap to de, fr, and it in order to make the same keymap doen't make much sense (though it should just be an include "de(ch)"). Also, with the two-letter domain-names, people think that fr is France, not French, then add the flag of France to the keymaps (because flags look good in the GUI). The distinction between languages and countries can be very political. > Even though the Swedish standard keyboard layout was made by the > Swedish National (standardisation) Body, it's for making it easy to > type the Swedish *language* (and, as it happens, the Finnish > language; of course it covers English too). In addition there is a > suggestion for a Swedish keyboard layout for the Sami *language* > (appropriate name: se-SE, which again is an RFC 3066 language tag > for Sami as used in Sweden). Using my proposal, there would be a file 'se' that would define this keymap (like there is now). Then there would be a file 'fi' that would include "se(whatever)". Plus there would be a file 'sme' that would define the Northern Sami language (presumably for Finland, Norway, and Sweden). The idea is to make as few changes as possible to the keymaps, but to normalize on *something*. Frank _______________________________________________ I18n mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://XFree86.Org/mailman/listinfo/i18n
