On Fri, 4 Nov 2005, Alan K Melby wrote:
So the question, finally, is this: has anyone has experience entering
text into a text both in Firefox under Linux in any of the following
languages (in alphabetical order)?
Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Italian,
Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish
I have experience with entering text into Firefox (and various other Linux
applications) in Arabic, Japanese, and various Romance languages.
On Linux, most languages have a "keyboard mapping" already installed which
can be switched to by (as Byron pointed out) a command like "setxkbmap es"
(using the two-letter ISO language code). I've found these mappings to
usually be identical to the keyboard layout that native speakers of the
language use in their home country, which is usually the same as the
Windows keyboard layout for the language as well.
These standard keyboard mapping files look like this:
http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/xkbcomp/symbols/es?rev=3.5
and can be completely modified and customized. For example, I took the
Arabic keyboard:
http://cvsweb.xfree86.org/cvsweb/xc/programs/xkbcomp/symbols/ar?rev=1.2
and modified it to produce a "phonetic" version suitable for English
speakers (for example "q" produces an Arabic qaaf, "3" produces an Arabic
ain, etc). If the standard keyboard layouts that come with Linux don't
suffice for your needs, you can easily modify one of these files to
produce the desired keyboard mapping.
Languages like Japanese and Chinese are a little more complex because you
don't have a one-character to one-keystroke mapping like you do with (I
think) every other language you mentioned. Even with just the Japanese
kana, there are more letters than there are keys. However, there are
several systems on Linux that allow easy input of these languages as well.
The one I've used in conjunction with Japanese is IIIM, which is quite
easy to set up and very easy to use in GTK applications like Firefox.
After installing IIIM, you can switch from English to Japanese mode by
hitting the "CTRL-SPACE" keyboard combination. A small Japanese symbol
will appear at the bottom of the window to let you know that you are in
Japanese mode. From there you simply type transliterations of the hiragana
you wish to type. After completing a word, if the letters match one or
more kanji characters, you are given the option to select one of the
various kanji options, or simply leave what you typed in hiragana or
katakana. It's very easy to use, although I'm not sure how it compares
with Windows methods of Kanji input.
Hope this helps, and please let me know if you want any more detailed
information!
~ Ross
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