On Sat, Jun 12, 2004 at 09:56:52AM -0700, Elvis Presley wrote:
> Re: Unicode Keyboard Input Linux
>
> I'm interested in using the Linux console as a
> multi-language keyboard
>
> 1) How do I switch the keyboard from language to
> language?
The kernel keyboard driver does not have the concept of language.
It has a keymap. You load it with the loadkeys utility.
Keymaps are rather powerful. They have 256 possible shift states
and any key can be a locking shift, so after pressing one of your
chosen key combinations you can use a different part of the keymap.
You have a FSM here.
> I read somewhere yesterday that you can switch between
> Ukranian and English keyboards using the RightAlt key,
This is not a property of Linux, but a property of that particular keymap.
You can do things just as you like.
> let me make some proposals:
Proposals to yourself?
> 2) Can I set up my own keymaps for these languages?
> Are they defined already?
Yes and yes.
> I might like to vary the dead-key sequence from
> {accent, letter} to {letter, accent}.
You define pairs of arbitrary symbols, so can use 'e just
as easily as e'. But so far these compose sequences used
pairs of 8-bit characters, not Unicode.
Some extremely recent kernels may work.
> 3) What about console fonts? How do I get/create them
> and install them?
They exist already. But you can make your own, if you want.
> I do not have a Linux PC yet.
> I have been googling for this information. The
> descriptions are plentiful, but they all seem to
> ignore the obvious.
The base documentation is that which comes with the kbd package.
Manual pages for loadkeys, setfont, keymaps.
These things are tricky and messy, and it is easiest just to
leave matters to the distribution. But if you like to fiddle
with them yourself, you can.
Andries
--
Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels
Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
