Cygwin X + HP-UX 11.11 + italian keyboard = AltGr not working

[Danilo Turina]

On 06/07/2011 16.02, Jon TURNEY wrote:
> On 06/07/2011 09:15, Danilo Turina wrote:
>>      having recently replaced my old keyboard (that had a US layout) with an
>> italian one, I'm having a problem with Cygwin X when running HP-UX clients:
>> AltGr does not work and this prevents me to use characters like "[" "{" "}"
>> "]", etc.
>>
>> I'm up to date with Cygwin and Cygwin X at the moment ("1.7.9(0.237/5/3)
>> 2011-03-29 10:10 i686 Cygwin" for Cygwin and "1.10.2.0" for XWin).
>>
>> These are the steps to reproduce the problem:
>>
>>      1) start Cygwin X
>>      2) disable access control ("xhost +")
>>      3) access via telnet/ssh a HP-UX machine
>>      4) open an xterm from the HP-UX machine in Cygwin X
>>      5) in the newly opened xterm try to use AltGr (AltGr + "è" (i.e. the key
>> at the right of "P"), should produce "{", while AltGr + Shift + "è" should
>> produce "{")
>
> I'm missing here what is actually produced.  Nothing? or the unmodified è?

The unmodified è (well, sort of, because when I press "è" on the 
keyboard I see on the terminal "I" (I think because of some other 
problem of the terminal with non-ASCII chars) and if I press AltGr+"è" I 
yet see "I", so it's just like pressing AltGr has no effect at all).

>
>>      6) fall on the floor crying in desperation
>
> This is perfectly normal for people having to deal with XKB :-)
>
>> Notice that when using a client from a Linux machine all works properly.
>>
>> A googled a lot and found a lot of information but only few of it applied
>> (=helped) to my specific case. I tried to mess with xmodmap and kbd config
>> files and also with other stuff, but nothing seemed to solve the problem.
>
> I think a solution is contained in this old mailing list post [1], use
> XKB_DISABLE=1 and adjust the keyboard map so that AltGr is Mode_switch and the
> keys have the expected mapping in group 2, activated via Mode_switch.
>
> Note that just reassigning AltGr to Mode_switch is not enough, you'll need to
> remap appropriately the keys which generate different characters with AltGr
> e.g. something like:
>
> xmodmap -e "clear mod5"
> xmodmap -e "clear mod3"
> xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Mode_switch Multi_key"
> xmodmap -e "add mod3 = Mode_switch"
> xmodmap -e "keycode 34 = egrave eacute bracketleft braceleft"
> (and so on for the other keys which need to generate different characters with
> AltGr)

I already encountered some like that while searching the internet but 
didn't work.
I tried what you wrote here but didn't work either...

Is there anything that I can do to go deeper into the analysis of this 
problem? xev seems not of any help, since it returns the same results 
both for Xming where all works and Cygwin X where I have the problem.

Ciao,
	Danilo

>
> I can't test this, because I don't have access to a HP-UX machine.
>
> [1] http://cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2004-03/msg00454.html
>
>> At the moment I'm using Xming 6.9.0.31 that doesn't seem affected by the
>> problem IF I set XKB_DISABLE=1 on the client machine (i.e. HP-UX).
>>
>> Trying to troubleshoot the problem, I used xev on the HP-UX machine to see if
>> the keys were properly recognized and, in effect, they are.
>> This are xev results for Cygwin X, when I press (and release) AltGr+è (thus by
>> trying to get "[") with XKB_DISABLED not set:
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> If I set XKB_DISABLED=1, I get, instead:
>>
> [snip]
>>
>> If I try xev on Xming with XKB_DISABLED=1 (where I have no problem at all), I
>> get:
>>
> [snip]
>
> It's kind of hard to know how to interpret these results since I don't know
> what XKB_DISABLED=1 actually does.
>
>
>> One strange thing that I noticed is that if I start Cygwin X by using
>> "startxwin" from the Cygwin's command line, I get the following warning on
>> screen:
> [snip]
>> The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
>>> Warning:          Type "ONE_LEVEL" has 1 levels, but<RALT>  has 2 symbols
>>>                    Ignoring extra symbols
>>
>> But that warning is not present in XWin.0.log (attached).
>
> I think this is normal, if a little odd.  Warnings from xkbocmp are written to
> stdout, but not written to the log.
>

-- 
DANILO TURINA
ALCATEL-LUCENT
Software Analyst
NM System Team
Network-Optics
Rieti (Italy)
Phone: +39 0746 600332

10 anni 2 mesi 27 giorni 6 ore 42 minuti 8 secondi

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