Hello,
> > An ideal solution would be to integrate compose rules into XKB (or core
> > protocols) maps but it needs changes in the protocol or a making new
> > extension. My proposals touch existent files (and compose subsytem) only.
>
> I agree that the Compose configuration should be integrated into XKB. However,
> I'd think that you could leave the old Xlib stuff the way it is. If Jane Doe
> wants to be able to have personal Compose sequences, she has to enable XKB.
> Of course, that's only if it's less work to develop and maintain.
>
> Also, what I understand is that you want to change XKB to provide compose
> sequences. Will that break interoperabilty with non XFree86 servers or
> clients compiled with non-XFree86 xlibs?
It seems that you and Kent misunderstood me.
I know my English isn't good but I thought my sentences "An ideal solution
would be ... but it needs ..." and "my proposals touch existent ... only"
don't contain any ambiguity. :-)
I *don't want* to change XKB protocol namely because it can "break
interoperabilty with ...".
> I guess before I can say anything intelligent about this style of
> customization, I'd want to know what is the method for configuring a private
> XKB keymap? The classic way is with xmodmap, but that's not at all XKBish.
> What should a user do to select an XKB symbol map in his home directory? Put
> setxkbmap -symbols $HOME/.xkb/mycustom or something?
No. The setxkbmap program doesn't read and load keyboard map files to Xserver.
It just sends *names* of files to Xserver and then the server reads those
files from its 'database'. Since a users home directory and the server
can be on different machines, you can't send an arbitrary file in such way.
But a user can use xkbcomp that is able to read files from the users directory,
compile them and then send a keyboard map to the server using XKB protocol.
But since XKB protocol doesn't deal with Compose files xkbcomp is useless
for such task.
> Then the KDE and
> Gnome tools that modify XKB from the client side can do the same thing for
> Compose as they do for the XKB symbols.
BTW, KDE and Gnome tools use setxkbmap (or the calls setckbmap uses) and
therefore can't load an arbitrary users file to a server too. They just send
names of keyboard map files that a user prefers. But those files should
exist in the servers 'database'.
> > Of course, if some rules overlap, Xlib just discards a previous rule and
> > uses latest one.
>
> Xlib or XKB? Or both/either?
I ment Xlib's ones only. :-)
> > In finally a most doubtfull part: how to specify needed Compose file.
> > Now I made an environment variable XCOMPOSEFILE which value should be a
> > name (with a path) of Compose file. But I realize it is unhandly for
> > users. Any ideas are welcome.
>
> Ug. As in Ug-ly. Desktop-level customization by environment variables is
> pretty crappy. I'd rather see something that was more general to XKB, too.
I can offer another way. Let setxkbmap stores a name of compose file in
some root window property. And Xlib reads this name from the server but
a complete path to the directory that contains all those files is compiled-in
into Xlib.
But such method can cause problems when a client and a server are on diferent
computers runing different versions of X's because the client application
gets the name of a file from a server but reads the file itself from the
local filesystem.
--
Ivan U. Pascal | e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Administrator of | Tomsk State University
University Network | Tomsk, Russia
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