Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[anothy]

//I like the HHKB, except that it doesn't have a
//builtin ``view'' key...

not to be contrary, but i'm using one right now,
and yes it does. it may depend on that sliding
switch on the back - mine's all the way to the
left, when viewed from a normal typing position.
the two "diamond" keys are View and Un-View (uh,
what's that called again?). the one on the right
of the keyboard even reverses function with the
shift key, in case you have the left one mapped
to Fn or control or something.

it required a few lines in the kbtab* tables in
kbd.c. those three lines represent my first
contribution to the Plan 9 kernel, just after we
got our HHKBs.
-α.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010205080554.EB3A6199F3@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>//I like the HHKB, except that it doesn't have a
>//builtin ``view'' key...
>
>not to be contrary, but i'm using one right now, and yes it does.

Not at all; this is great news.  I really like the HHKB, but I found it
a pain to use under Unix due to the need to hit ``fn'' to get arrow
keys and other such things.  Plan 9 promises to be a much more
habitable environment.

>it may depend on that sliding
>switch on the back - mine's all the way to the
>left, when viewed from a normal typing position.
>the two "diamond" keys are View and Un-View (uh,
>what's that called again?). the one on the right
>of the keyboard even reverses function with the
>shift key, in case you have the left one mapped
>to Fn or control or something.

Cool, I can dig it.

>it required a few lines in the kbtab* tables in
>kbd.c. those three lines represent my first
>contribution to the Plan 9 kernel, just after we
>got our HHKBs.

Rock and roll....  Too bad I can't plug my HHKB into my Thinkpad.  :-(

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[William Staniewicz]

So are these steps correct?

Edit '/lib/keyboard' as follows ...

	0451  @yo         ё	cyrillic small letter io
	20AC e$			euro dollar
	2018  l'          ‘	single turned comma quotation mark
	2019  r'          ’	single comma quotation mark

Then rebuild the kernel ...

	cd /sys/src/9/pc
	mk 'CONF=pccpudisk'
	cp 9pccpudisk /386
	9fat:
	cp 9pccpudisk /n/9fat/sdC0

After that I would reboot and everything would be cool?

Sorry if this seems basic. I am still learning.

		-Bill


>
> i'd add a mapping e$ -> 20AC to /lib/keyboard and remake the kernel.
> then alt e$ will produce the euro symbol as l$ produces pound sterling and
> y$ produces yen.
>
> interpreting plain alt e as euro would mess up existing mappings
> because there are several alt escapes in /lib/keyboard
> that start with e.
>

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Russ Cox]

Yes, that's right except you want to call it
9pccpud (assuming you're running a cpu server)
since the boot loader doesn't know about the
long file names.

Russ

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[rob pike]

It would be very little work to create a file, writable only by eve,
that allows you to
	cp /lib/keyboard /dev/kbdtrans
or some such and avoid the recompilation.  However, this problem
is a local one and it doesn't feel right to make it so generally
programmable.  Something more along the way timezone works
would suit me better, but I don't see the way.

-rob

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Scott Schwartz]

> cp /lib/keyboard /dev/kbdtrans

It's more a question of personalization than localization.  That mechanism
could also be used for qwerty vs dvorak, or replacing function keys with
selected non-ascii characters.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010206171115.E303A199F8@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>It would be very little work to create a file, writable only by eve,
>that allows you to
>	cp /lib/keyboard /dev/kbdtrans
>or some such and avoid the recompilation.  However, this problem
>is a local one and it doesn't feel right to make it so generally
>programmable.  Something more along the way timezone works
>would suit me better, but I don't see the way.

No, you're right; it is a local problem.  But a solution might fix a
bunch of local problems.  :-)  A filesystem to handle the keyboard is
my best guess, but that isn't gaining a lot of favor.

I agree, though, that putting the programmability into the kernel
isn't a good solution....

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Richard Miller]

> What is the difference between unicode symbols 20A0 and 20AC?

20A0 is an old generic "euro-currency" symbol, assigned before the Euro was
invented.  20AC is correct for the Euro.

-- Richard Miller

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[rob pike]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 203 bytes --]

What is the difference between unicode symbols 20A0 and 20AC?
Which should have which escape sequence? I'll put what's appropriate
in /lib/keyboard here but I'm not the right judge of that.

-rob


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 3519 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2.1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 310 bytes --]

i'd add a mapping e$ -> 20AC to /lib/keyboard and remake the kernel.
then alt e$ will produce the euro symbol as l$ produces pound sterling and
y$ produces yen.

interpreting plain alt e as euro would mess up existing mappings
because there are several alt escapes in /lib/keyboard
that start with e.


[-- Attachment #2.1.2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1710 bytes --]

From: William Staniewicz <wstan@localhostnl.demon.nl>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 08:34:03 -0500
Message-ID: <20010206073748.49391199EA@mail.cse.psu.edu>

I have been using an Italian keyboard for the last several
months. I am not concerned about remapping all the keys
since I now have gotten used to where everything is.
However, the is a Euro dollar key that I would like to
implement. Is there a simple way on Plan9 to assign this
symbol to my "e" <alt> position?

		-Bill

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[William Staniewicz]

I have been using an Italian keyboard for the last several
months. I am not concerned about remapping all the keys
since I now have gotten used to where everything is.
However, the is a Euro dollar key that I would like to
implement. Is there a simple way on Plan9 to assign this
symbol to my "e" <alt> position?

		-Bill

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[forsyth]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 310 bytes --]

i'd add a mapping e$ -> 20AC to /lib/keyboard and remake the kernel.
then alt e$ will produce the euro symbol as l$ produces pound sterling and
y$ produces yen.

interpreting plain alt e as euro would mess up existing mappings
because there are several alt escapes in /lib/keyboard
that start with e.


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 1710 bytes --]

From: William Staniewicz <wstan@localhostnl.demon.nl>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support
Date: Tue, 6 Feb 2001 08:34:03 -0500
Message-ID: <20010206073748.49391199EA@mail.cse.psu.edu>

I have been using an Italian keyboard for the last several
months. I am not concerned about remapping all the keys
since I now have gotten used to where everything is.
However, the is a Euro dollar key that I would like to
implement. Is there a simple way on Plan9 to assign this
symbol to my "e" <alt> position?

		-Bill

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[okamoto]

Do you know what is happening in Japan now as "Keitai" (NTT Docomo i-mode
in other word).  That mobile phone has ten keys, and each has
only one of "あかさたなはまやらわ"etc keytop.  Inputting Japanese
on such machine looks like a game to me.  If you want to write somewhat long e-mail, you will be much troubled.  ^_^

Kenji

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> Inputting Japanese on such machine looks like a game to me.

inputting english in the same manner to send GSM SMS's is a bad joke too.

there's some term to describe the:

        abc def
   ghi jkl mno
pqrs tuv wxyz

layout used by GSM mobile, but i forget.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> I'll go out on a limb and say that I'd rather not see it in
> the kernel at all, though.  Maybe a very basic kernel based
> driver for basic I/O, but then hook into a user level program
> to do all the real processing.  kbdfs, anyway?  :-)

that's a really bad idea. 2 context switches per character typed when
all that's required is one translation table in the most extreme case
(64k runes * 2 bytes = 128k).  obvious that sort of a table is ridiculous,
even though 128k now isn't much, but all you need is a table (or
set of tables) that cover all the possible scan code and store the
matching rune.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <05c401c0902c$457489c0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr> you write:
>that's a really bad idea. 2 context switches per character typed when
>all that's required is one translation table in the most extreme case
>(64k runes * 2 bytes = 128k).  obvious that sort of a table is ridiculous,
>even though 128k now isn't much, but all you need is a table (or
>set of tables) that cover all the possible scan code and store the
>matching rune.

Yeah, I thought about the context switch thing, but mentally justified
it to myself by way of figuring that keyboard input is so relatively
infrequent that it wouldn't be a big deal.

The problem with the tables in their present form is that they're not
very flexible; to change the meaning of a key, one has to rebuild the
kernel.  Well, that sucks, but the only two solutions are to add some
sort of way to change the translation tables in the kernel, or to move
keyboard processing into user land.

I'm not sure that the added complexity in the kernel is justified by
saving a couple of context switches, bearing in mind that a few million
instructions will go by between every keystroke.

Then again, I'm sure the code that Charles sent you doesn't add much
complexity to the kernel.  My fear, however, is that bloat will
eventually creep in if a bunch of such things, each not very complex in
and of itself, is added to the kernel....this is what I feel happened
to Unix.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Wladimir Mutel]

In article <05a601c08fe2$73335a20$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr> you wrote:

>> Inputting Japanese on such machine looks like a game to me.

> inputting english in the same manner to send GSM SMS's is a bad joke too.

> there's some term to describe the:

>         abc def
>    ghi jkl mno
> pqrs tuv wxyz

> layout used by GSM mobile, but i forget.

	It's called T9 , right ?

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Theo Honohan]

Wladimir Mutel wrote:
> >
> > there's some term to describe the:
> >
> >         abc def
> >    ghi jkl mno
> > pqrs tuv wxyz
>
> > layout used by GSM mobile, but i forget.
>
> 	It's called T9 , right ?

Isn't that just the name of the predictive input scheme?
It seems to be a trademark of Tegic (http://www.t9.com/).

The above layout is "ITU Rec E.161, option A", I think.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> It's called T9 , right ?

i believe the acronymn starts with a t.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010206020645.7213119A01@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>Do you know what is happening in Japan now as "Keitai" (NTT Docomo i-mode
>in other word).  That mobile phone has ten keys, and each has
>only one of ""etc keytop.  Inputting Japanese
>on such machine looks like a game to me.  If you want to write somewhat
>long e-mail, you will be much troubled.  ^_^

It's thing in the US with cell phones and English.  Personally, I find
it really painful.

I'm not sure why people want to reinvent the web on cell phones and
PDA's, which is basically what WAP and iMode do.  :-(

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[okamoto]

> you type the stem of the prononciation
>and cycle through them till you get the one you want.

I still hate to use "kana" on the keytop, and use Romaji input.  Actually, I've
never seen any scientist uses that "kana" keytop.  Those are for untrained
persons, if still there is such in Japan...

Kenji

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> I still hate to use "kana" on the keytop, and use Romaji input.  Actually,
I've
> never seen any scientist uses that "kana" keytop.  Those are for untrained
> persons, if still there is such in Japan...

yeah, well i'm not an expert.  it's just what i've seen.
i've used qwerty kana keyboards -- yuk.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[okamoto]

>I remember using a computer in Israel one time.

I was much surprised to see there that my friend, incidently his name is
also Dan ^_^, typed hibble from right to left. :-)  How Plan 9 can deel with
it...

Kenji

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> I was much surprised to see there that my friend, incidently his name is
> also Dan ^_^, typed hibble from right to left. :-)  How Plan 9 can deel with
> it...

well, unicode can, but that was a mistake.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010206011623.D71FC19A01@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>>I remember using a computer in Israel one time.
>
>I was much surprised to see there that my friend, incidently his name is
>also Dan ^_^, typed hibble from right to left. :-)  How Plan 9 can deel with
>it...

Dan's a pretty common name in that part of the world, but it's
pronounced differently.  :-)

I forgot about the right-to-left thing.  Try picking up a Hebrew or
Arabic book sometime...it's a weird experience.  It took me literally a
minute to figure out how to open the thing right side up; my friend's
mother finally got so disgusted she took it, opened it for me and then
handed it back.

The font issue can be weird, though.  Years ago, I installed FreeBSD on
my Israeli friend's computer when she was writing her thesis.  Anyway,
I installed some Hebrew fonts for X11 at the same time.  To test them
out, we did something like telnet to an Israeli machine....  The
characters displayed correctly, but from left to right, not the correct
right to left.  She said, ``yeah, they look okay, but it's
backwards....''  We never did figure out an adequate solution.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Ed Wishart]

You might consider the BTC 5100.  I use one at home and work, measures
< 6 by 12 inches.  Works great with plan 9, windows, Linux.  A search
on Yahoo for BTC 5100 turned up 399 web pages.  Must be still available.
To quote paul vixie:  ``If God uses a keyboard, he uses a BTC 5100.''
(This quote is from memory)

ed

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <200102051923.LAA01104@pyramid.cs.unr.edu> you write:
>You might consider the BTC 5100.  I use one at home and work, measures
>< 6 by 12 inches.  Works great with plan 9, windows, Linux.  A search
>on Yahoo for BTC 5100 turned up 399 web pages.  Must be still available.
>To quote paul vixie:  ``If God uses a keyboard, he uses a BTC 5100.''
>(This quote is from memory)

I remember looking at the BTC 5100 right before I got my HHKB.  I
didn't like it all that much (that is, the pictures that I saw....); I
thought that the layout was too ``busy''.

Probably the best looking keyboard I ever saw was the DEC Unix keyboard
that one could get on Ultrix machines and early Alphas.  There's a picture
on PFU's keyboard collection web page.  Also, the IBM 84 keyboard rocked.
 From the looks of it, the Apple Newton keyboard would be my favorite if
they would jsut get rid of caps lock, put control in the right place, and
get rid of the power key....It'd look a lot like the HHKB with arrow keys.

Man, I'd pay money for someone to make one of those....

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[jmk]

On Mon Feb  5 13:47:20 EST 2001, cross@math.psu.edu wrote:
> That said, I'd like to get my hands on one of these lexmark
> keyboards, but of course they're no longer manufactured.

you can still get them:
	http://www.pckeyboard.com/surfer.html

$89 without pointing stick, $99 with.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[jmk]

Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>:
	ps- what keyboards are Bell Labs folks using now, anyways?

we're still using the same keyboards we were using last time this
question came up, the old eighty-something key lexmarks; i have a
couple on the shelf in case any die. however, more of us are using
laptops as we have wireless both at work and at home so the need
to buy more keyboards is diminished. personally, i like the thinkpad
keyboard best.

--jim

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010205144434.189C3199F3@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>:
>	ps- what keyboards are Bell Labs folks using now, anyways?
>
>we're still using the same keyboards we were using last time this
>question came up, the old eighty-something key lexmarks; i have a
>couple on the shelf in case any die. however, more of us are using
>laptops as we have wireless both at work and at home so the need
>to buy more keyboards is diminished. personally, i like the thinkpad
>keyboard best.

Yeah, the keyboard was one of the reasons I decided to buy a
Thinkpad.

That said, I'd like to get my hands on one of these lexmark
keyboards, but of course they're no longer manufactured.

It looks like we're going to be stuck with the Windows key no
matter how much we dislike it.

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> There's got to be a better way to handle keyboards than all this
> magic in the kernel....

i was of that opinion, but that would mean 3 zillion different
keyboard types which would increase manufacturing costs.  all
you they do (in general) is to stick the right set of keytops
on and a scan-code/character table is set up to match the
keytops.  you have to do the translation anyway and a table
lookup costs nothing.  in general it's done by some black art.

the fix charles sent me is small and elegant and should
work for some subset of japanese keyboards i think.  if i
remember, some have a shift, left shift and right shift keys
(ie. 4 potential characters on each key).

however, japanese is a more complicated case.  what i've seen
is that you have a piece of code that sorts the kanji you use
on a frequency basis, you type the stem of the prononciation
and cycle through them till you get the one you want.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <038f01c08fa7$74fe30e0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr> you write:
>i was of that opinion, but that would mean 3 zillion different
>keyboard types which would increase manufacturing costs.  all
>you they do (in general) is to stick the right set of keytops
>on and a scan-code/character table is set up to match the
>keytops.  you have to do the translation anyway and a table
>lookup costs nothing.  in general it's done by some black art.
>
>the fix charles sent me is small and elegant and should
>work for some subset of japanese keyboards i think.  if i
>remember, some have a shift, left shift and right shift keys
>(ie. 4 potential characters on each key).

This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about; making
a table driven translation machine driven by a little language.
What I don't like is the hardcoded tables in devcons.c.

I'll go out on a limb and say that I'd rather not see it in
the kernel at all, though.  Maybe a very basic kernel based
driver for basic I/O, but then hook into a user level program
to do all the real processing.  kbdfs, anyway?  :-)

>however, japanese is a more complicated case.  what i've seen
>is that you have a piece of code that sorts the kanji you use
>on a frequency basis, you type the stem of the prononciation
>and cycle through them till you get the one you want.

Ouch, that seems cumbersome, to put it mildly.  :-(  No offense
to the Japanese members of 9fans, but I'm glad I don't have to
type the language.  :-)

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> (Yeah, I'm ignoring the fact that in said Paris Internet
> Cafe, you were probably using an OS that expected a French
> keyboard....)

no.  the scan codes from pc keyboards do not change, just
the keytops.  then, the translation is done in s/w.  you
only really need a french keyboard if you want to type
latin-1, a superset of ascii.

i always liked the 5620 keyboard.  the sony vaio's
is pretty close to that (well my 505's is); touch,
key size and shape.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[paurea]

Boyd Roberts writes:
 > From: "Boyd Roberts" <boyd@planete.net>
[...]
 > only really need a french keyboard if you want to type
 > latin-1, a superset of ascii.
 >

Not really. You can use, for example, an spanish keyboard, which is qwerty,
at least, and has all the latin-1 characters. You would have all the
punctuation marks scrambled up, but the letters would be in place...
--
                 Saludos,
                         Gorka

"Curiosity sKilled the cat"

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> Not really. You can use, for example, an spanish keyboard, which is qwerty,
> at least, and has all the latin-1 characters. You would have all the
> punctuation marks scrambled up, but the letters would be in place...

the question was whether you needed a french keyboard for
a french pc and the answer is:  no.

inputing of latin-1 had nothing to do with that discussion.

and no, it's not just a simple question of the letters.

eg:

   m and ; are swapped

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <018901c08f5f$276e9ec0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr> you write:
>> (Yeah, I'm ignoring the fact that in said Paris Internet
>> Cafe, you were probably using an OS that expected a French
>> keyboard....)
>
>no.  the scan codes from pc keyboards do not change, just
>the keytops.  then, the translation is done in s/w.  you
>only really need a french keyboard if you want to type
>latin-1, a superset of ascii.

Oh, okay.  Then I'll repeat my question to Rob, ``what, you didn't
have your happy hacking keyboard with you?''  :-)

I remember using a computer in Israel one time.  My friend's father
asked me, ``can you take a look at my old computer?  I want to fix
it up and give it to my daughter....''  ``Uhh, I don't really do
Windows, so, I don't know if I'd be much help....''  ``Of course you
would!  Here, have a look.''

Well, the keyboard had mixed English/Hebrew keycaps, which threw me
off whenever I looked at it.  Luckily, I touch-type most of the time,
so it wasn't that big of a deal.  Windows 95 was the Israeli edition,
so all of the text, including dialogue boxes, was in Hebrew.  I can't
read Hebrew.  I had to have people read the contents of every text
window on the system and translate into English before I could do
anything....  It was disconcerting.

>i always liked the 5620 keyboard.  the sony vaio's
>is pretty close to that (well my 505's is); touch,
>key size and shape.

There's got to be a better way to handle keyboards than all this
magic in the kernel....

	- Dan C.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Jean Mehat]

Sami Ilekti has added azerty support to the PC kernel. The last time I heard
from him, he had hacked the translation tables, and was considering a more
general way to remap the keyboard.

You can find him at sami@mime.univ-paris8.fr.


--
Jean Mehat, universite de Paris 8 Vincennes a Saint Denis,
jm@ai.univ-paris8.fr, (33) 1 4940 6403, (33) 1 4940 6783 (fax)

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[okamoto]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 246 bytes --]

This is a simillar case for our JIS keyboard.  I replaced the key-mapping table in
/sys/src/9/pc/kbd.c which can be found
http:/basalt/cias/osakafu-u.ac.jp/plan9/p9index.html.
However, this is of course for Japanese keyboard.  :-)

Kenji


[-- Attachment #2: Type: message/rfc822, Size: 2253 bytes --]

From: "Boyd Roberts" <boyd@planete.net>
To: <9fans@cs.psu.edu>
Subject: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 2001 00:40:34 +0100
Message-ID: <000f01c08e3a$b46773e0$0ab9c6d4@cybercable.fr>

has anyone done it?

it's just a fairly simple keyboard remapping as qwerty is
pretty close to azerty.  the translation is always done
in software, from what i've seen 'cos the keyboards generate
'standard' scan codes, but the keytops are labelled differently.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> This is a simillar case for our JIS keyboard.  I replaced the key-mapping
table in
> /sys/src/9/pc/kbd.c which can be found
> http:/basalt/cias/osakafu-u.ac.jp/plan9/p9index.html.
> However, this is of course for Japanese keyboard.  :-)

thanks.  charles forsyth sent me along some stuff that does
it in a generic way.  it turns up as /dev/kbmap.  you read/write
it as:

    [012]    <scan-code>    <decimal-rune>

    0 = unshifted
    1 = shifted
    2 = alt graphic shifted

managed to install it and boot it and everything.

will attack the azerty map tomorrow.

you need a modified pc/kbd.c too.

neat piece of code.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[rob pike]

I remember sitting in a Paris Internet café being confounded
by the miserable keyboard, in which everything was UPPER CASE
and CAPS LOCK was really SHIFT LOCK and the letters were in
different places and - worst of all - period, comma, semicolon,
and the other punctuation characters were in screwy places.
I sympathize.

-rob

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> I sympathize.

it's not that bad type text on, i can do my usual 120wpm on it, but to write
code?
it is _absolutely ghastly_ -- all the special chars are in stupid places.  i've
written
maybe 50k+ lines of code on one of these things.

i forgot, in my previous posting,  that there's another problem, 'cos there's
another
shift key [Alt Graphic] to give you:

    ~ # { [ | ` \ ^ @ ] } ¤

i'd like to be able to push it onto /dev/cons, rather than hacking up all the
kbd.c's.
then again, i could just limit it to the pc.  although from looking at the
source
i'm beginning to think that it's a nasty problem.

eg: hitting the '2' key gives an é [e acute] and that's 8 bits, which may have
ramifications all the way up the line.

this is going to require some thought.  maybe i'll have a hack at it after
they've
had a hack at my tibia, in hospital, next week.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Fariborz 'Skip' Tavakkolian]

It is strange how these things always happen in Paris. A couple of
months ago I was in Paris trying to debug some software on a
Swedish Linux box which came without its USB keyboard. A quick
shopping trip, and there it was, a French keyboard! Americans, typing
on a French keyboard, on an OS that expected a Swedish keyboard.
We never did figure out how to type "; fortunately we had cut&paste.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> It is strange how these things always happen in Paris.

tell me about it :-(

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> We never did figure out how to type "; fortunately we had cut&paste.

if i'm not confused, ';' and 'm' are swapped.  " -- that's a bit strange.

hitting the '3' key should have given you ".

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Dan Cross]

In article <20010204005601.306EE199D7@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>I remember sitting in a Paris Internet caf being confounded
>by the miserable keyboard, in which everything was UPPER CASE
>and CAPS LOCK was really SHIFT LOCK and the letters were in
>different places and - worst of all - period, comma, semicolon,
>and the other punctuation characters were in screwy places.
>I sympathize.

what, you didn't take your happy hacking keyboard with you?

(Yeah, I'm ignoring the fact that in said Paris Internet
Cafe, you were probably using an OS that expected a French
keyboard....)

	- Dan C.

ps- what keyboards are Bell Labs folks using now, anyways?
I like the HHKB, except that it doesn't have a builtin ``view''
key, and I don't dig on the idea of having to hit ``fn'' to
use the error keys as view....  I thought it would be cool
to map the left alt/meta keys to Alt, and the right alt/meta
keys to up and view, respecticely.  I don't have a machine
up which will take my HHKB right now, though, as my thinkpad
doesn't seem to be able to take an external keyboard.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[rob pike]

Pipefile might help, but the handling of Alt might complicate
matters and require a teeny bit of help in the kernel.  You could
easily build a special PC-only raw keyboard file and use pipefile
to connect a special processor to that, but then you introduce
problem of bypassing special code in devcons.c.  The most
satisfactory way might be to provide a mapping operation in
devcons.c, like the button swapper in the mouse code, that
accepts pairs to exchange, like this:
	az
	za

-rob

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

> The most satisfactory way might be to provide a mapping operation in
> devcons.c,

i'd thought of writing 'azerty' or 'qwerty' to consctl to get it
to swap mappings.  will have a bit of a ponder before hacking away.

may need some machine specific hook to get 'alt graphic' to work.

at least when i was at digital, in paris, we had nothing but qwerty
keyboards.  in the real world it's 99% azerty.  want to see a nasty
keyboard?  check out the HP 9000 series console keyboards.  stuff
like | and others aren't even marked on the keytops!

a truly superb piece of engineering and that's before the damn
thing boots.  the big ones can take 20 minutes.

even a vax 780 with an la-120 booted faster than that.

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[andrey mirtchovski]

well, you know what they say in germany:
qwertz ruley...


Boyd Roberts wrote:

> at least when i was at digital, in paris, we had nothing but qwerty
> keyboards.  in the real world it's 99% azerty.  want to see a nasty
> keyboard?  check out the HP 9000 series console keyboards.  stuff
> like | and others aren't even marked on the keytops!

Re: [9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

on another note i remember asking rob, a long time ago,
why, on plan 9, the accent was typed before the character,
because that's not the way you write them.

anyway, with every azerty keyboard i've seen they're all
like that -- totally counter-intuitive.

but it can always get worse.  would you like to match
the beginning of the line with a regex?  well as soon
as you type ^ it goes into 'i'd better wait until i
see what the next character is' mode.  this is a real
pain when you want to match:

    ^a
    ^e
    ^i
    ^o
    ^u

etc...

so you type ^ <space> <char>.

same problem with ~.

[9fans] azerty [french] keyboard support

[Boyd Roberts]

has anyone done it?

it's just a fairly simple keyboard remapping as qwerty is
pretty close to azerty.  the translation is always done
in software, from what i've seen 'cos the keyboards generate
'standard' scan codes, but the keytops are labelled differently.