Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
On Sun, 25 Sep 2016, Brian wrote: On Sat 24 Sep 2016 at 15:07:10 +, david...@freevolt.org wrote: On Sat, 24 Sep 2016, Lisi Reisz wrote: My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign fonts "working", but that is another story.) Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those of you doing this or similar find works comfortably. This is what I use in my /etc/default/keyboard file: $ grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/keyboard XKBMODEL="pc101" XKBLAYOUT="us,ru,sy" XKBVARIANT="" XKBOPTIONS="grp:caps_toggle,compose:menu" BACKSPACE="guess" The "ru" portion of the XKBLAYOUT value, and the "grp:caps_toggle" setting in XKBOPTIONS are the relevant parts for your purposes. It makes capslock a toggle between en_US, russian, and syrian arabic keyboard layout. The usual capslock function is still available via Shift+Capslock. I'll be interested to see other responses. Neat! Done as root, of course, because I do not think a user can change the keymap. Yes. A method that allows an unprivileged user to configure their keyboard in a given VT would better suit my purposes but, until I find that method, this is what I'm using. (Though I have since changed the XKBLAYOUT to just "us,ru" because that three-way toggling, us -> ru -> us -> sy, was so annoying as to be practically non-functional, my arabic is crap besides, etc.) The setupcon manual implies a ~/.keyboard can be used but it does not work for me. Me neither. I have not managed to get that to work. (For french language input, specifically, I prefer the "alt-intl" value for XKBVARIANT, but for most other purposes it is somewhat impractical on my keyboard model, and I would not wish to impose it on arbitrary users. I should/might/will probably start a new thread soon about getting ~/.keyboard customisation to work in virtual terminals.) However, a user can set the screen font by specifing a file to use with VARIANT. This is ~/.console-setup.CYR: ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]" CHARMAP="UTF-8" CODESET="CyrSlav" FONTFACE="TerminusBold" FONTSIZE="14x28" Load it with 'setupcon -f' CYR. Thank you so much for this. This filled in a couple of missing links for me, and now I can view cyrillic in the VT of my choice. (Before this, I could enter, but not view cyrillic in a VT, unless I made system-wide changes. That is, to view whatever I had typed, I had to either start up an X display, or as root make the system-wide change to CyrSlav codeset.) Also, having speculated that the ACTIVE_CONSOLES value could be a command substitution, I tried ACTIVE_CONSOLES="$(tty)" in my ~/.console-setup.cyr. It works as expected. Now issuing "setupcon -f cyr" in a given VT configures CyrSlav codeset for just that VT. (As default, I prefer Lat15.)
Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
Lisi Reisz wrote: > My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this > point > of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign > fonts "working", but that is another story.) > > Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do > those of you doing this or similar find works comfortably. > > Thanks, > Lisi Hi, Lizi, let me share also my experience as I am using bg/ru/en/de on daily basis. I use TDE (as you may know already). In the keyboard setup I have few options to select. Most important is "phonetic" This results in following command setxkbdmap -model pc105 -layout bg -variant phonetic or Russian setxkbdmap -model pc105 -layout ru -variant phonetic Bulgarians/Russians have 1-2 conventional layouts for phonetic where Latin letters correspond to Cyrillic letter. The ones not present in the Latin alphabet are located on some other keys. You can search/google for the layout and write them on the keys with white permanent marker (after testing). Alternatively there are printed self glueing letters for keyboards you can order online. I never learned the "standard" Bulgarian layout as known from the type writers from the time before computers got in, so I find the phonetic really easy to use. I hope this helps regards PS: console is a different story, but I think you are not interested in typing Cyrillic in the console
Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
On 09/24/2016 10:10 AM, Lisi Reisz wrote: My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign fonts "working", but that is another story.) Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those of you doing this or similar find works comfortably. Thanks, Lisi This may be of some help: http://linuxmanagers.blogspot.com/2016/09/using-multiple-language-keyboards-in.html
Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
On Sat 24 Sep 2016 at 15:07:10 +, david...@freevolt.org wrote: > On Sat, 24 Sep 2016, Lisi Reisz wrote: > > >My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point > >of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign > >fonts "working", but that is another story.) > > > >Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those > >of > >you doing this or similar find works comfortably. > > This is what I use in my /etc/default/keyboard file: > >$ grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/keyboard >XKBMODEL="pc101" >XKBLAYOUT="us,ru,sy" >XKBVARIANT="" >XKBOPTIONS="grp:caps_toggle,compose:menu" >BACKSPACE="guess" > > The "ru" portion of the XKBLAYOUT value, and the "grp:caps_toggle" > setting in XKBOPTIONS are the relevant parts for your purposes. > > It makes capslock a toggle between en_US, russian, and syrian arabic > keyboard layout. > > The usual capslock function is still available via Shift+Capslock. > > I'll be interested to see other responses. Neat! Done as root, of course, because I do not think a user can change the keymap. The setupcon manual implies a ~/.keyboard can be used but it does not work for me. However, a user can set the screen font by specifing a file to use with VARIANT. This is ~/.console-setup.CYR: ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]" CHARMAP="UTF-8" CODESET="CyrSlav" FONTFACE="TerminusBold" FONTSIZE="14x28" Load it with 'setupcon -f' CYR. -- Brian.
Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
On 09/24/2016 05:07 PM, david...@freevolt.org wrote: > On Sat, 24 Sep 2016, Lisi Reisz wrote: > >> My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point >> of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign >> fonts "working", but that is another story.) >> >> Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those >> of >> you doing this or similar find works comfortably. > > This is what I use in my /etc/default/keyboard file: > >$ grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/keyboard >XKBMODEL="pc101" >XKBLAYOUT="us,ru,sy" >XKBVARIANT="" >XKBOPTIONS="grp:caps_toggle,compose:menu" >BACKSPACE="guess" > > The "ru" portion of the XKBLAYOUT value, and the "grp:caps_toggle" > setting in XKBOPTIONS are the relevant parts for your purposes. > > It makes capslock a toggle between en_US, russian, and syrian arabic > keyboard layout. That's a valid way of doing this (most desktop environments allow you to define multiple keyboard layouts + a shortcut to switch without you having to fiddle with Xkb btw.), I personally find it really hard though to write Cyrillic with a Russian keyboard layout, if the characters aren't printed on the keyboard. Of course, I grew up with the Latin layout, and I don't have any real muscle memory for the Cyrillic layout. (Typing then would be a LOT of trial and error for me.) If you indeed grew up on a Russion keyboard, your suggestion of just switching the layout is probably the easier solution. It's just not something I'd personally be able to use in any efficient manner. Regards, Christian
Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
On 09/24/2016 04:10 PM, Lisi Reisz wrote: > My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point > of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign > fonts "working", but that is another story.) > > Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those > of > you doing this or similar find works comfortably. There's ibus and the ibus-table-translit package, so all GUI applications that support ibus [1] will allow you to enter cyrillic characters via typing latin equivalents. (ibus is a generic input framework originally designed for complex scripts, such as Chinese, but now supports a lot of things, just search for packages with ibus-table- in their name. Btw. there's also a package for traditional Russian, if you're interested in really old writings. For any modern Russian I would recommend just using the aforementioned ibus-table-translit though.) For example, typing "b" will give you a б, typing "v" will give you a в, typing "ya" will give you a я, typing "yo" will give you a ё, and so on. ibus is not completely trivial to setup, but it's not terribly difficult either. It does take a bit of getting used to, but if you switch the method back to "English", the keyboard will behave as you'd normally expect. Alternatively, there's something similar but as a website, called http://translit.net/ which does the same in the Browser (Javascript required) - most Russian people I know use that regularly. Also, in case this is archived and people find this: for Mac OS X user there appears to be https://github.com/archagon/cyrillic-transliterator which I believe does the same thing that ibus-table-translit does. (Never tried it though.) Hope that helps. Regards, Christian [1] See https://wiki.debian.org/I18n/ibus for details. Also, ibus-setup is your friend.
Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
On Sat, 24 Sep 2016, Lisi Reisz wrote: My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign fonts "working", but that is another story.) Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those of you doing this or similar find works comfortably. This is what I use in my /etc/default/keyboard file: $ grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/keyboard XKBMODEL="pc101" XKBLAYOUT="us,ru,sy" XKBVARIANT="" XKBOPTIONS="grp:caps_toggle,compose:menu" BACKSPACE="guess" The "ru" portion of the XKBLAYOUT value, and the "grp:caps_toggle" setting in XKBOPTIONS are the relevant parts for your purposes. It makes capslock a toggle between en_US, russian, and syrian arabic keyboard layout. The usual capslock function is still available via Shift+Capslock. I'll be interested to see other responses.
Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting
My husband has just asked to do this. His system is vanilla from this point of view. (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and no foreign fonts "working", but that is another story.) Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him. I.e., what do those of you doing this or similar find works comfortably. Thanks, Lisi
