Re: [gentoo-user] wtf do all the Layout Options mean in gnome keyboard preferences?

["Bo Ørsted Andresen" <bo.andresen@zlin.dk>]

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On Monday 26 June 2006 01:36, Robert Persson wrote:
> The problem is that I don't know how to get it so that when I 
> press either the alt or the win key I get all those extra characters.

I don't think that pressing alt, win or meta should provide any extra 
characters with the us international keyboard layout.

> Added to that is all this business about alt being set or not being set to
> meta and so on.

I don't think that is relevant to the layout. Only to functionality in certain 
programs like e.g. emacs as you mentioned. Many others too.

> Compare this to macos, even very ancient version of it, where you get a very
> rich keyboard layout out of the box.

I wouldn't know...

> Not only umlauts, but bullets, ellipses and the 2nd letter of the Danish
> alphabet are available at the press of the alt/option key.

The second letter in the danish alphabet is b... ;)

> The second issue is that the US international keyboard, which I am
> planning to use, isn't exactly ideal. It was designed for an ordinary
> typewriter, where diareses and double quotes, as well as carets and
> circumflexes, are identical.

Are you absolutely sure they are identical? When I press a dead key once 
nothing happens. The following press be it the say key, space or some vowel 
determines what it becomes...

> But it is the only extended US keyboard readily available for X, which is
> the only reason I even consider using it. However it is actually unusable on
> a desktop without the extra modifier keys working because, where the
> standard US keyboard has quotes, carets and tildes, this one only has dead
> keys. 

You should not need modifier keys for that. Just AltGr (the right alt key on 
my keyboard).

> As I said, the Apple keyboard layouts are vastly superior. Unfortunately my
> attempts to create a custom, Apple-like layout (when I was using KDE)
> didn't work. I just don't understand xkb well enough.

Does [1] help you?

[1] http://hansmi.ch/articles/apple-keyboard-with-linux

-- 
Bo Andresen

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