special caracters on german keyboard

[Alexander Holst]

Hi Lucas,


On Thu, 2003-10-02 at 12:06, Lukas Müller wrote:
> Hi Alexander,
> 
> 
> thanks very much for your help and information, i appreciate it. the @
> is now no problem, as well as |. but its really wired, the "{ } [,],"
> doesnt work. how do you access them on your keyboard? i used fn-alt-8
> for { as an example on OSX but it doesnt work on YDL. 
> 
> 
> i saw the instructions of Christoph Ertelt but i got alread stocked
> when i didnt find
> usr/sbin/kdbconfig on

/bin/loadkeys still does the trick for the console, kbdconfig AFAIR used
to be a tool to permanently choose a keyboard layout for the console
only, which you should have done at install time anyway. loadkeys only
temporarily loads a keyboard mapping for a console. What happened to
kbdconfig, I actually don't know. I usually edit the file
/etc/sysconfig/keyboard directly. I guess redhat-config-keyboard took
the place of kbdconfig. It works from a terminal as well as from within
an X session. Try the man pages for both, loadkeys and
redhat-config-keyboard.

> my YDL3.0 distribution to activate the mapping. is it because he
> described that for YDL2.0, so i doesnt apply for my version?
> 
> 
> look forward to get some more hints :-)
> 
> 
> cheers
> 
> 
> lukas

I assume you have loaded the SwissGerman Keyboard Layout (de_CH), which
is described in the following file for X:

/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/de_CH

what you are looking for is:
braceleft    { which is found at <AC11>, the ä (aumlaut)
braceright   } which is found at <BKSL>, the $ (right of 0, I assume)
bracketleft  [ which is found at <AD11>, the ü (uumlaut)
bracketright ] which is found at <AD12>, the ! (exclamationmark)
backslash    \ which is found at <LSGT>, the < (less and greater key)

Any other keys can be found by investigating this file, especially the
second set of []'s are the ones of interest, they represent the
"AltGr"ed and "AltGr Shift"ed keys, whereas the first set of []'s
defines the regular keys (to be precise, the first definition within the
first set of []'s is the value of the key typed alone, the second is the
value for shift+key):

    // Describes the differences between a very simple US/ASCII
    // keyboard and a very simple Swiss keyboard

    // Alphanumeric section
    name[Group1]= "Swiss German";
    key <TLDE> {	[   section,	degree		]	};
    key <AE01> {	[	  1,	plus 		],
			[       bar,	exclamdown	]	};
    key <AE02> {	[	  2,	quotedbl	],
			[        at,	oneeighth	]	};
    key <AE03> {	[	  3,	asterisk	],
			[ numbersign			]	};
    key <AE04> {	[	  4,	ccedilla	]	};
    key <AE05> {	[	  5,	percent		]	};
    key <AE06> {	[	  6,	ampersand	],
			[   notsign			]	};
    key <AE07> {	[	  7,	slash		],
			[ brokenbar			]	};
    key <AE08> {	[	  8,	parenleft	],
			[      cent			]	};
    key <AE09> {	[	  9,	parenright	]	};
    key <AE10> {	[	  0,	equal		]	};
    key <AE11> {	[ apostrophe,	question	],
			[ dead_acute			]	};
    key <AE12> {	[ dead_circumflex, dead_grave	],
			[ dead_tilde			]	};

    key <AD03> {	[	  e,	E		],
			[  EuroSign			]	};
    key <AD06> {	[	  z,	Z		]	};
    key <AD11> {	[ udiaeresis,	egrave		],
			[ bracketleft			]	};
    key <AD12> {	[ dead_diaeresis, exclam	],
			[ bracketright			]	};

    key <AC10> {	[ odiaeresis,	eacute		]	};
    key <AC11> {	[ adiaeresis,	agrave		],
			[  braceleft			]	};
    key <BKSL> {	[     dollar,	sterling	],
			[ braceright			]	};

    key <LSGT> {	[      less,	greater		],
			[ backslash,	brokenbar	]	};
    key <AB01> {	[	  y,	Y 		]	};
    key <AB08> {	[     comma,	semicolon	]	};
    key <AB09> {	[    period,	colon		]	};
    key <AB10> {	[     minus,	underscore	]	};


This is only an excerpt of the de_CH file. As this file only describes
the differences of a SwissGerman keyboard to a basic US PC keyboard, in
order to get all the "extra" keys, you have to investigate the file for
the basic PC layout as well.

Trying stuff in a Texteditor helps a lot in finding some weird key
combinations. Be aware that some of the combinations will reveal "dead"
characters, which means they have to be followed by another character in
order to be displayed. Typing space as the second character usually
reveals some dead characters.

I hope that the file I found is the one your X server is currently
using, ohterwise look into your /etc/X11/XF86Config file for the
keyboard section and find a line like:

Option      "XkbLayout" "de_CH"  # or whatever

Then find the corresponding symbols file and start diggin ;)

Happy iBookLinuxin,
Alex

-- 
Alexander Holst
Pforzheim University of Applied Sciences
<holst@fh-pforzheim.de>
ph: +49 [0]7231 28-6837
fx: +49 [0]7231 28-6040