Keymap question

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Jack

Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/19 15:36 #1

Quite a regular

Hi all,

devs:keymaps/ contain keymap files

There are several columns defining (afaiu) the keymap layout.
An example line:

KEY 10 ALONE "q" SHIFT "Q" ALT "/" SHIFT_ALT "Q"

However I can't make the ALT ones to appear

Am I missing something?
The keymap in question: us_il_ISO-8859-8

Any suggestion/info will be very appreciated,
Jack

Edit: typos

Edited by Jack on 2007/10/19 16:06:02

"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

Raziel

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/19 18:24 #2

Home away from home

@Jack

If i understand you correctly none of the ALT special keys
are displayed for you?

Could it be a non conformative keyboard?
(I mean, none of those who are actually meant to be used in
your country?) Just guessing here!

I have a german keyboard and just checked, all ALT keys do
work.

Maybe it's a problem with the input driver and your keyboard?
You have a Logitech PS2, haven't you?

People are dying.
Entire ecosystems are collapsing.
We are in the beginning of a mass extinction.
And all you can talk about is money and fairytales of eternal economic growth.
How dare you!
– Greta Thunberg

TetiSoft

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/19 20:37 #3

Just popping in

@Jack

Experimenting with hebrew?

The usa_il_ISO-8859-8 keymap has hebrew characters
on the Alt key combinations. However, keymap.library
will refuse to accept hebrew characters when the
destination charset for the keymap does not contain
hebrew characters.

You either need to use an application which tells
keymap.library that the keymap shall be used for
a hebrew charset and not the current system default
charset, or you have to switch the current system
default charset to ISO-8859-8 (hebrew) by selecting
hebrew as first preferred lannguage in the Locale
prefs editor.

Oh, and you need to use fonts which contain hebrew glyphs
of course. E.g. Fixed or DejaVu, but e.g. not BitStream
Vera.

Edit: The example with the Q key should of course work
without any charset problems. When it doesnt, maybe
your keyboard is broken or has problems with the AOne,
try a different keyboard...

Jack

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/20 18:48 #4

Quite a regular

@TetiSoft

Bingo!!!
10x a lot, now can type Hebrew in reverse, half of the work is done.
there was a hack that could insert "left" into input stream after each keypress, will dig it out and see if it is compatible with OS4.
Is there a way to do such a "hack" natively? In a system-friendly way?

What's the meaning of two selected languages in locale prefs?
Can two languages be switched on the fly? How?

@Raziel
All was needed is to select hebrew as a language in the locale

TIA,
Jack

"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

ZeroG

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/20 20:26 #5

Not too shy to talk

@Jack
Quote:

What's the meaning of two selected languages in locale prefs?

You can use it as a fallback setting.

For example my preferred language setting looks like:

german_ISO-8859-15
english

A program that make use of the locale.library will first look if there is a german catalog file, if there is not it will search a english catalog file, if there is not it will use its default strings.

In rare cases the default strings are not english and if my 2. preferred language is not english it will ignore the english catalog and i end up with a program in french.

Jack

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/20 22:21 #6

Quite a regular

@ZeroG

Quote:

A program that make use of the locale.library will first look if there is a german catalog file, if there is not it will search a english catalog file, if there is not it will use its default strings.

I see. A bit of confusion on my side.
The ideal situation here would be one of these:

1. switch between the two keymaps while the secondary (Hebrew) will produce hebrew character without holding no special keys.

2. option to switch on/off the alt qualifier (like there's a caps-lock, but in software with alt).

The reason is: Hebrew alphabet is not English with extra characters, but entirely differnt one. And is written right-to-left.

Jack

"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

Jack

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/20 22:33 #7

Quite a regular

@TetiSoft

Quote:

You either need to use an application which tells
keymap.library that the keymap shall be used for
a hebrew charset and not the current system default
charset, or you have to switch the current system
default charset to ISO-8859-8 (hebrew) by selecting
hebrew as first preferred lannguage in the Locale
prefs editor.

Hmm. That means I can't define Hebrew keymap as default one without selecting Hebrew locale.
Pretty annoying: listing of the files show abbreviated months in Hebrew but reversed

the workaround is to compile a Hebrew catalog with reversed string. Maybe that should be the soltion as os doesn't invert automatically the Hebrew strings.

Jack

"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

TetiSoft

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/21 11:32 #8

Just popping in

@Jack

Quote:

there was a hack that could insert "left" into input stream
after each keypress, will dig it out and see if it is
compatible with OS4. Is there a way to do such a "hack"
natively? In a system-friendly way?

The most system-friendly wy is to add the Unicode bidirectional
writing algorithm to OS4.

Another solution is to use editors and word processors
which know that hebrew is written from right to left.

A hack which inserts cursor movements after hebrew keystrokes
is only a hack. The result would be that the text is stored
in reverse order when saving it. Such a text would be unusable
on another machine which would reverse the text for display
only, but not in memory or in the text file.

The hebrew support in OS4 is "experimental", I stated
that in the unpublished releasenotes. Its just the basic
support to allow writing applications which support
the right-to-left writing direction. The Locale prefs
editor writes arabic and hebrew country names right-aligned
from right to left, but thats IIRC the only component which
has some limited support for writing right to left...

TetiSoft

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/21 11:39 #9

Just popping in

@Jack

Quote:

What's the meaning of two selected languages in locale prefs?

Already answered in this thread, just wated to add an
"RTFM Locale prefs editor speedhints" comment

Quote:

Can two languages be switched on the fly? How?

Most OS4 prefs editors have a "Save As..." menu entry
and a "Create icons" menu entry. The saved prefs files
can be doubleclicked. You can "Leave out" and "Snapshot"
the files in Workbench. So its easy to create an "English"
and a "Hebrew" icon in the WB window/screen which switch
the current system default language and charset on the fly.

Jack

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/21 20:28 #10

Quite a regular

@TetiSoft

Quote:

Most OS4 prefs editors have a "Save As..." menu entry
and a "Create icons" menu entry. The saved prefs files
can be doubleclicked. You can "Leave out" and "Snapshot"
the files in Workbench. So its easy to create an "English"
and a "Hebrew" icon in the WB window/screen which switch
the current system default language and charset on the fly.

My intention is to make it really "on the fly" solution. Here's an idea:
if I could query the current locale settings, I could make a script that queries the locale and swtiches to the other one via "sys:prefs/locale load something.prefs".
Is there a "scriptomatic" way I can do that (the query stuff)?
Then I could attach my script to a hotkey and switch locales while typing...
With a docky showing the country flag...

"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

ZeroG

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/21 21:24 #11

Not too shy to talk

@Jack

There is a global environment variable called "Language" which contains the name of the current default language since V40.

With >=V50 there are "LanguageName" and "Charset" vars, too.

"LanguageName" contains the english name of the current default language and "Charset" the MIME name of the current default charset.

Jack

Re: Keymap question

Posted on: 2007/10/21 22:34 #12

Quite a regular

@ZeroG

Thanks for the info. Gone to play with

Jack

"the expression, 'atonal music,' is most unfortunate--it is on a par with calling flying 'the art of not falling,' or swimming 'the art of not drowning.'. A. Schoenberg

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