Keyboard question/change request

[Simos Xenitellis]

*Troy* wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am a member of a workgroup which is designing a new keyboard
> layout for Finland (and therefore also for Sweden). The purpose of the 
> new keyboard is to enable the input
> of a large range of latin based characters. Microsoft
> has been involved in the work, so their support is built into the 
> process.
>
> The keyboard is based largely on using dead-keys. The goal is generate 
> an open ended group of Unicode characters, using Unicode's 
> combinations to generate characters. The goal is to allow users to 
> type any character, even ones
> without a precomposed equivalent. We have used MES-2 as
> a checklist for the important characters, but any Unicode character 
> which can be generated from a combination of the listed diacritics and 
> letters should be allowed to be generated using the keyboard.
>
> Because of the limited number of keys available on the keyboard,
> we have been forced to add some uses for dead-keys which are not 
> currently possible on MS Windows or X Windows (unless the capability has
> been added to X Windows w/o me noticing). Specifically, current
> dead-keys always combine with the following character, or then
> generate the diacritic itself. Our new design requires that two
> or more dead-keys can be used to generate a character with both
> of those diacritics. (Some other special combinations are also
> specified.) There are also some additional dead-keys which are
> currently not allowed.
>
> I would like to know who is the person, or the persons, who
> are responsible for keyboard input handling for X Windows?

Hello,

There is a transition in X.org from the older monolithic tree to a 
modular version.
In the new version, the keyboard input handling is being simplified 
through the xkeyboard-config project, at
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXKeyboardConfig
You may also find some insight at
http://www.livejournal.com/community/xkbconfig/
a community about keyboard input support.

It appears your request is mostly related to adding the appropriate 
entries to
the "Compose" configuration file,
http://cvs.freedesktop.org/xorg/xc/nls/Compose/en_US.UTF-8?view=markup
(here you define the key sequences with dead keys that produce the 
codepoinds you want)
and then by adjusting the symbols configuration file for Finnish
http://cvs.freedesktop.org/xlibs/xkbdesc/symbols/fi?view=markup
you enable your specific keyboard layout.

As you can see, in the existing Finnish keyboard layout file there is 
one layout that has dead keys.

In XOrg there is functionality to stuck up to five (or is it six?) 
diacritics/accents/etc on a glyph, which
would make happy all keyboard layout designers. Rumour has it that a 
Greek was involved in this,
as in ancient greek (polytonic) there are too many accents.
Specifically, there are nine distinct "accents" and if we had to 
associate with single keys, we would put in disuse
a big area of the keyboard.
One way to do it is associate three "dead_keys" to each physical 
character (one by pressing the key as is, one with SHIFT and finally 
with AltGr).

You want to stuck two (or more) dead keys to produce a character with 
two "accents". You do this in the Compose file (en_US.UTF-8).
In Modern Greek, the character ι (iota) can have either ΄, ¨ or both ΅. 
Therefore,

Α. For ΄ (ΤΟΝΟΣ) only:
<dead_acute> <Greek_iota>	: "ί" U03AF # GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH TONOS

Β. For ¨ (DIALYTIKA) only: 
<dead_diaeresis> <Greek_iota>	: "ϊ" U03CA # GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DIALYTIKA

C. For ΅ (DIALYTIKA AND TONOS) only: 
<dead_acute> <dead_diaeresis> <Greek_iota>	: "ΐ" U0390 # GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DIALYTIKA AND TONOS
<dead_diaeresis> <dead_acute> <Greek_iota>	: "ΐ" U0390 # GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA WITH DIALYTIKA AND TONOS

As you can see in case C, it is good to cover the permutations.

For an example of three "accents", enjoy the following :)

<dead_iota> <dead_grave> <U1f01>	: "ᾃ" U1F83 # GREEK SMALL LETTER ALPHA WITH DASIA AND VARIA AND YPOGEGRAMMENI

I hope this helps,
Simos

>
> FYI, the address for our workgroup is http://www.kotoistus.fi/
>
>
>
> Troy Korjuslommi                Tksoft Inc.
> tjk at tksoft.com <http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg>
>
>