French-Canadian Keyboard & keyboard switching

[Tijl Coosemans]

On Wednesday 29 April 2009 15:20:34 PJ wrote:
> Cool. Then I can ask some questions regarding all of this.
> 
> rc.conf: (snipped to show the relevant entries)
> font8x16="iso15-8x16"
> font8x14="iso15-8x14"
> font8x8="iso15-8x8"
> allscreens_flags="VGA_80x60 cyan"
> rpcbind_enable="YES"
> mountd_flags="-r"
> nfs_client_enable="YES"
> nfs_client_flags="-n 4"
> samba_enable="YES"
> cupsd_enable="YES"
> apache22_enable="YES"
> postgresql_enable="YES"
> mysql_enable="YES"
> webmin_enable="YES"
> #keymap=fr_CA.iso.acc.kbd
> 
> Question:
> 1. the font entries? The /usr/share/syscons/fonts/ entry has suffixes
> of .fnt - ???

Your font and keymap settings are ok. The extensions can be omitted.
See the EXAMPLES sections in vidcontrol(1) and kbdcontrol(1).

> 2. the keymap is commented out because, although it gives me the
> fr_CA keyboard, it also uses French messages which are a bit tortured
> (French courtly affectations in the language are quaint but also make
> for long and convoluted terminology - notice that a text translated
> to French is always longer). K.I.S.S.

Keyboard settings shouldn't affect message localisation. Do you set
the environment variable LANG in ~/.login_conf or in a shell startup
script (.profile or .cshrc or other depending on the shell)? If so,
set it to en_CA.ISO8859-15 or something. From q5 below I think you've
currently set it to fr_CA.utf-8.

> xorg.conf: (snip for relevant)
> Section "ServerLayout"
>     Identifier     "X.org Configured"
>     Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
>     InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
>     InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
>     Option    "AllowEmptyInput" "off"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "Files"
>     ModulePath   "/usr/local/lib/xorg/modules"
>     FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
>     FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
>     FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
>     FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
>     FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
>     FontPath     "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "Module"
>     Load  "extmod"
>     Load  "record"
>     Load  "dbe"
>     Load  "glx"
>     Load  "GLcore"
>     Load  "xtrap"
>     Load  "dri"
>     Load  "freetype"
> EndSection
> 
> Section "InputDevice"
>     Identifier  "Keyboard0"
>     Driver      "kbd"
>     Option    "XkbModel" "pc104"

This might have to be pc105, but it probably doesn't matter.

>     Option  "XkbLayout" "us,ca"

Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#QWERTY
If you have Canadian Multilingual Standard, this option needs to be set
to "ca(multi)". If you have Canadian French, set it to "ca" or
"ca(fr)".

>     Option  "XkbOptions" "grp:toggle"

If you don't need layout switching just delete this.

> EndSection
> 
> Questions:
> 3. This setup enables switching from the default us to what appears
> to be the French keyboard. The fr_CA has the accented characters
> assigned to normal keys while keeping most of the English keys
> normal; the French kbd needs two keypresses to get the accents.
> Tiresome, not so say dumb.

The French have an azerty layout with accented letters also directly
available.

> 4. The toggle does not toggle; pressing right_Alt switches to fr but
> another rtAlt press does nothing. And other Alt combinations don't do
> anything except freeze the kbd and xterm has to be closed and
> thereafter the fr is not accessible without a reboot or one must use
> fluxbox menu to switch the keyboard. How to get the fr_CA instad of
> the fr?

I don't know anything about toggling.

> 5. Upon closing xorg, there are these messages:
> Failed to open file
> (/usr/local/share/fluxbox/nls/fr_CA.utf-8/fluxbox.cat)... (twice)
> Checking Google & fluxbox, it appears this file does not exist. Fluxbox
> simply has not included it in their distribution.
> Mayba Blackbox has it; I'll have to check.

Probably harmless. It's just for message localisation. It should fall
back on English.