AW: 'de' keyboard layout issues (Re: AW: AW: AltGr key mostly fires an additional CONTROL key)
Jon TURNEY
jon.turney@dronecode.org.uk
Wed Aug 10 12:12:00 GMT 2011
On 09/08/2011 00:17, Paul Maier wrote:
> 1. Tilde sign
> -------------
>
>>> Tilde sign (~) should be a normal (not a blind) key.
>>> In Windows I hit AltGr+"+" to get ~, in XWin I need to type AltGr+"+" then space to
>> get a ~.
>>> See attachment for the initial XWin xmodmap -pke table.
>>> Possible xmodmap correction (works fine):
>>> keycode 35 = plus asterisk plus asterisk asciitilde
>>
>> This is a can of worms I don't want to open :-)
In case it wasn't clear, the can of worms here is ensuring that XWin selects a
keyboard layout which matches the Windows one in all cases.
>> At the moment, in the 'de' layout, the tilde deadkey will add a macron
>> diacritic, e.g. AltGr + "+" + a = ã.
Obviously I meant to write 'tilde diacritic' here :-)
>> I really lack the expertise to determine if this is a bug in xkeyboard-config
>> (if this german keyboard behavior is something no german keyboard user would
>> ever expect or want)
>>
>> The xkb configurations we use come from the xkeyboard-config project, and
>> aren't trying to be identical to Windows, but to conform to the appropriate
>> national standards and user expectations.
>>
>> However, I can see in the case of XWin this is problematic, as it will be
>> confusing to switch between X and normal Windows windows which have different
>> keyboard behavior.
>
> I did some research: German computer keyboard layout is defined in DIN 2137-2.
> And to my surprise I found, that tilde is a dead key there.
> That means, that the xkeyboard-config project perfectly matches the DIN norm,
> while Windows (where the key is not dead) does not match it.
> So I understand, that you may want to stick to the DIN norm.
Usability comes before standards compliance :-)
> A workaround for guys like me, who want the XWin keyboard work the same like Windows,
> is possible with xmodmap, so yeah ... let's close this point.
Doing some more research, I found an upstream bug [1], which seems to make the
opposite claim about DIN 2137-2(1998)
I also discovered that the nodeadkeys variant of the de layout was at one
stage the default used by XWin when a German Windows keyboard layout was
reported [2]
Maybe the 'correct' solution is possibly to create a 'nodeadtilde' variant of
the de layout in xkeyboard-config, and then to arrange for that to be the
default used by XWin when Windows reports a German keyboard layout.
Perhaps you'd like to try the attached patch to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/de,
which adds a nodeadtilde variant, which you can then select with -xkbvariant
nodeadtilde.
Or perhaps the correct solution is to use one of the existing deadgraveacute
or deadacute variants as the XWin default when Windows reports a German
keyboard layout?
[1] https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9752
[2] http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2003-05/msg00495.html
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