On Fri, 2005-02-18 at 12:36, Elvis Presley wrote: > Thanks Everyone... > > I'm slowly getting the idea. > > I just found a little file on the Fedora called '/etc/sysconfig/i18n' which > contains what appear to be environment variables setting the locale. That > would > explain why nobody is using .profile anymore. > > The installation procedures need to set up this file correctly... and > compiling > the utf-8 locales, of course. I'll try compiling the locales on the Debian > myself.
It's sad that with Debian/Ubuntu you do not get UTF-8 locales by default. > My next step is figuring out how the fonts work... The Fedora installs like a > dream, but the fonts are all ugly. Yes, all the editors work fine, except Open > Office 1.1.2, which does not render accented Greek vowels, either in the text, > or on the menus. [The SuSE Open Office works great!] Most distros now use something called "fontconfig". You simply place the font file in /usr/share/fonts/ and it's available automatically to the system. Try it out. Type "fc-list" before adding a font. Add it, then "fc-list" again and you will see it. (In some cases, "fc-cache -f" to force a complete update of the list). > --- Pablo Saratxaga <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > The reason why Ctrl-Alt-K works from us->el but not the other way around > > is a known KDE bug; the reason is that the KDE keyboard switcher applet > > doesn't load a stack of keyboard maps, but only one at once, > > and in the Greek layout there is no latin "k" letter! so you cannot > > type Ctrl-Alt-K (nor anything with latin letters) when the greek layout > > has been loaded that way. > > I naturally made the assumption that the 'K' was the name of the key, not a > letter in the character set. The keyboard extention (or X itself?) should be > translating keyboard events into actions (eg "switch to next map"). All other > keyboard events get translated into characters by the current keymap. The KDE > applet is getting in the way. "If thine eye offend thee cast it out," or "Non > sunt multiplicanda entia praeter necessitatem." > > [That would explain the curious behavior of the KDE Control Panel when I try > to > use a non-function key in the change-keymap setting. It displays a mysterious > little box, then throws my key combination away, and reverts to the previous > setting, when I say "OK".] > > > Instead of using the KDE keyboard switcher you use X11 directly > > (with setxkbmap or in the config file) and load two or more layouts > > (eg "us,el" above) then Ctrl-X or Alt-X etc with X a latin letter will > > work, as X11 will be able to find it on the "us" layout (or other layout > > you choosed). > > So, 'setxkbmap' must be the command-line interface to the keyboard > "extension". > This should do the trick. <happy-face> > > Now, what about "input methods?" > > I read somewhere, these seem to be separate processes which provide visual > feedback while the character is being composed. [They must be X applications > themselves.] I like Yudit, because it puts down the character representation > of > the compose key (like the ';', the greek accent key) before I press the > vowell. > > I haven't seen any of that so far with xkb. > > [The only problem with an input method as an application process is that the > kernel would have to perform a context switch on each keyboard event. This > seems ridiculously time consuming.] > > Does it make sense to use an IM for Greek? There are multiple input methods to write in languages and we are getting to a point which all will fold to one (or two). As a GNOME user, my preferred method is to use GTK+ IM (yes, there is such a thing). Assuming you are running GNOME, you 1. Make sure that no changes in xorg.conf are in place.That is, you have a vanilla system with regards to input methods, so we do not have interference.. 2. Right-click on the panel Add to Panel/Utility/Keyboard Indicator Strangely enough, apart from Indicator, it's also a Keyboard switcher. Once done, you will see the string "USA" on your panel. Right-click on it and choose "Open Keyboard Preferences". Go to "Layouts" and choose the languages you want to use. Safe choices are "US English" and "Greek", or you might go for "UK English" and "Greek". You can add up to four languages in the list. Then, click on "Layout Options". Here we choose the key combination to switch between language. I prefer under "Group Shirt/Ctrl behavior" to use both Shift keys. Choose which you prefer. Click ok and you are done! How to test? Open up "gedit" (Start/Accessories/Text Editor on Fedora Core). Switch language and enjoy typing. Right-click inside the Text Editor and you get an option to choose Input Methods. Here, you will see Default (GTK+ IM) and X Input Method (XIM). Default is good. Oh, tell me if you see something called "Internet/Intranet" in the list. Do not use setxkbmap with GTK+ IM, it will mess it up. > Any help in understanding how it all works is greatly appreciated. > > I'll keep googling. > > [Thanks also for the tip on setting up the Greek support.] > > Thanks. > > Elvis > > PS > > Give me some more time to get registered on the other lists, but here is > another big surprise: It looks to me like the 'rpm' command is internally used > by installation programs on archives in their data set. That would explain why > I can't make rpm recursively install all the required archives in a > distribution directory. I can't be typing dozens of command lines, or poking > around in a package-manager dialog box, to take Yudit from my SuSE dvd and put > it on my Fedora. Am I missing something? If you use the command line "rpm" program, you need to include in the same line all the relevant .rpm packages. This is the manual way of doing stuff, and it's not recommended. It's better to use an package manager that you specify a directory with RPM files and it will sort them out for you. Reading a previous e-mail of yours, I am strongly against installing packages from other distributions, as you will get to a point that things will not work and help will not be available. Major distributions have extensive package repositories which you can make use of. Look for them. Simos -- Linux-UTF8: i18n of Linux on all levels Archive: http://mail.nl.linux.org/linux-utf8/
