Re: gtk and composing characters

[Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net>]

Jens Herden wrote:

> > The new version of XOrg (7.0) is about to be published soon, so there
> > are chances these changes will not make it immediatelly into the new
> > version.
> > Afaik, XOrg is in second release candidate, so changes are not easy to
> > go in just now.
> >    
>
> We are not really in a hurry, because I have a script that patches up an 
> installed Xorg or Xfree installation.
>
>  
>
> > The "compose" file is
> > http://cvs.freedesktop.org/xorg/xc/nls/Compose/en_US.UTF-8
> > and it is referenced from
> > http://cvs.freedesktop.org/xorg/xc/nls/compose.dir?view=markup
> > Here you need to add a line such as
> >
> > the_location_of_the_compose_file:		km_CB.UTF-8
> >    
>
> probably km_KH.UTF-8 because the country code of Cambodia is kh.
>  
Yep, you are right.

>  
>
> > which means where the compose file. You will notice that this often
> > points to en_US.UTF-8.
> >
> > Have a look at a similar bug for Kyrghiz, for the full steps:
> > https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2609
> >    
>
> Sorry for my slowness, but you lost me here a little. I have difficulties to 
> understand how these different locale specific compose files work together. 
>
> I will explain what I am currently doing in my installation script. I look for 
> every locale that matches *.UTF-8 and I append my Khmer compose rules to the 
> Compose file of these locale. I am doing this because there was no locale for 
> Cambodia (kh) in the past and I want to be sure that everyone, no matter 
> which locale setting they are using, is able to use the Khmer keyboard. In 
> fact most people will use it in conjunction with an English keyboard because 
> there are no Roman characters in it. 
>
> I understand that when I am following what you propose I will create a Compose 
> file that gets used only when my system is using a Cambodian locale but not 
> in case of en_US.UTF-8
> This is not want I want to achieve. 
>  
Hi Jens,
By adding Khmer as yet another language to XOrg, you will be able to use 
both (let's say) English and Khmer.
I did not realise that Khmer was not listed in XOrg. There are a few 
extra steps.
I describe the nutshell:

You will be able to switch between the two with a key shortcut, such as 
Alt-Shift, as it is available with other languages.
The way to instruct manually XOrg on this would be with running 
something like that

/usr/X11R6/bin/setxkbmap -layout 'us,kh' -model pc105 -option 'grp:alt_shift_toggle'


However, you may want to make it a bit more persistent, so you can also 
modify your XOrg configuration file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf)
with something like

# **********************************************************************
# Input devices
# **********************************************************************
Section "InputDevice"

   Identifier	"Keyboard"
   Driver	"kbd"
   Option 	"AutoRepeat" "500 30"
   Option 	"XkbModel"	"pc104"
   Option 	"XkbLayout"	"us,kh"
   Option 	"XkbOptions"    "grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll"
EndSection


These changes will automatically be picked up by KDE and you will be 
able to use Khmer out of the box.
There is a program called KXKB for KDE that is supposed to help you with 
this. I do not use KDE, so I can't help more.

For GNOME, there is a nice language switcher applet that you can use 
from the GUI to add English and Khmer,
http://te.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Setting_up_your_browser_for_Indic_scripts#GNOME_2.8.x_and_above
http://simos.info/blog/?p=342 (Sorry, this is with screenshots but in 
Greek. To demonstrate that the process is all from the UI).
You have to do the previous steps to install Khmer in XOrg, however for 
those Compose sequences you need to update the GTK+
sources as I described in the first mails of this thread.

What to do next?
1. Have a look at the XKeyboardConfig project at XOrg, 
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software_2fXKeyboardConfig
Since there is no entry already for Khmer in the keyboard configuration 
files, you will have to go through this first.
There is a mailing list for XKB issues at the link above which will be 
able to assist with specifics.

These might be helpfull as well:
http://www.livejournal.com/userinfo.bml?user=xkbconfig
http://www.livejournal.com/community/xkbconfig/1362.html
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2608

Simos