Re: Experiments with classical Greek keyboard input

[Vasilis Vasaitis <vvas@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

  Since I'm still cc'ed here...

On Tue, May 09, 2006 at 09:04:52PM +0300, Joe Schaffner wrote:

..[snip]..

> <dead_acute> is on the semi-colon key and <dead_horn> is on the same
> key, shifted, the colon key.
> 
> <dead_grave> is on the single-quote key and <dead_ogonek> is on the
> double-quote key.
> 
> That's a pretty good layout. I like it.
> 
> Why not name these keysyms <dead_psili> and <dead_dasia>?

  Because the list of keysyms is fixed, as defined in
/usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h. At the time, using arbitrary existing
keysyms made more sense than petitioning for "correctly-named" new
ones. It works, after all. But OK, now maybe it's time to ask for a
few new names if people are annoyed by the current state of affairs.

> Anyway, I activate the gr keymap like this:
> 
> setxkbmap "us,gr(polytonic)" -option "grp:alt_shift_toggle"
> 
> The command syntax is troublesome. There seem to be other ways of
> doing it. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to work.

  The canonical invocation would be:

	setxkbmap -layout us,gr -variant ,polytonic \
		-option grp:alt_shift_toggle

> Yes, the keymap is there, I can see it on the task bar. To switch to
> another group, I can use the alt_shift combination (another meta
> symbol? Where are all these symbols defined?).

  In /etc/X11/xkb, rules/xorg transforms grp:alt_shift_toggle to
group(alt_shift_toggle). So you can look at the relevant section in
symbols/group to see how this implements the layout switching. It all
boils down to the generation of the ISO_Next_Group and ISO_Prev_Group
keysyms.

> Yes, I can enter greek characters. The <dead_acute> seems to work, but
> I am not sure if it is outputting a tonos or a acute. It's probably a
> tonos.
> 
> None of the other dead keys seem to work.
> 
> Any ideas?

  For the others to work, you need to have at least
LC_CTYPE=el_GR.UTF-8. In my system, with LANG=el_GR.UTF-8, everything
is working as it should. Keep in mind that for GTK+ applications you
also need GTK_IM_MODULE=xim defined (or else you have to right-click
on each textbox, and select Input Methods -> X Input Method).


-- 
Vasilis Vasaitis
"A man is well or woe as he thinks himself so."



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