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Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting

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On Sun, 25 Sep 2016, Brian wrote:

> On Sat 24 Sep 2016 at 15:07:10 +0000, davidson@freevolt.org wrote:
>
>> On Sat, 24 Sep 2016, Lisi Reisz wrote:
>>
>>> My husband has just asked to do this.  His system is vanilla from
>>> this point of view.  (Mine is in a mess, with a messed-up scim and
>>> no foreign fonts "working", but that is another story.)
>>>
>>> Advice please on the best way to achieve this for him.  I.e., what
>>> do those of you doing this or similar find works comfortably.
>>
>> This is what I use in my /etc/default/keyboard file:
>>
>>    $ grep '^[^#]' /etc/default/keyboard
>>    XKBMODEL="pc101"
>>    XKBLAYOUT="us,ru,sy"
>>    XKBVARIANT=""
>>    XKBOPTIONS="grp:caps_toggle,compose:menu"
>>    BACKSPACE="guess"
>>
>> The "ru" portion of the XKBLAYOUT value, and the "grp:caps_toggle"
>> setting in XKBOPTIONS are the relevant parts for your purposes.
>>
>> It makes capslock a toggle between en_US, russian, and syrian
>> arabic keyboard layout.
>>
>> The usual capslock function is still available via Shift+Capslock.
>>
>> I'll be interested to see other responses.
>
> Neat! Done as root, of course, because I do not think a user can
> change the keymap.

Yes. A method that allows an unprivileged user to configure their
keyboard in a given VT would better suit my purposes but, until I find
that method, this is what I'm using.

(Though I have since changed the XKBLAYOUT to just "us,ru" because
that three-way toggling, us -> ru -> us -> sy, was so annoying as to
be practically non-functional, my arabic is crap besides, etc.)

> The setupcon manual implies a ~/.keyboard can be used but it does
> not work for me.

Me neither. I have not managed to get that to work. (For french
language input, specifically, I prefer the "alt-intl" value for
XKBVARIANT, but for most other purposes it is somewhat impractical on
my keyboard model, and I would not wish to impose it on arbitrary
users. I should/might/will probably start a new thread soon about
getting ~/.keyboard customisation to work in virtual terminals.)

> However, a user can set the screen font by specifing a file to use
> with VARIANT. This is ~/.console-setup.CYR:
>
>  ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-6]"
>  CHARMAP="UTF-8"
>  CODESET="CyrSlav"
>  FONTFACE="TerminusBold"
>  FONTSIZE="14x28"
>
> Load it with 'setupcon -f' CYR.

Thank you so much for this. This filled in a couple of missing links
for me, and now I can view cyrillic in the VT of my choice.

(Before this, I could enter, but not view cyrillic in a VT, unless I
made system-wide changes. That is, to view whatever I had typed, I had
to either start up an X display, or as root make the system-wide
change to CyrSlav codeset.)

Also, having speculated that the ACTIVE_CONSOLES value could be a
command substitution, I tried

  ACTIVE_CONSOLES="$(tty)"

in my ~/.console-setup.cyr. It works as expected.

Now issuing "setupcon -f cyr" in a given VT configures CyrSlav codeset
for just that VT. (As default, I prefer Lat15.)

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Thread

Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting Lisi Reisz <lisi.reisz@gmail.com> - 2016-09-24 16:10 +0200
  Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting davidson@freevolt.org - 2016-09-24 17:10 +0200
    Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting Christian Seiler <christian@iwakd.de> - 2016-09-24 17:30 +0200
    Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting Brian <ad44@cityscape.co.uk> - 2016-09-25 19:00 +0200
      Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting davidson@freevolt.org - 2016-10-04 03:30 +0200
  Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting Christian Seiler <christian@iwakd.de> - 2016-09-24 17:30 +0200
  Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting ken <gebser@mousecar.com> - 2016-09-26 07:50 +0200
  Re: Typing Cyrillic script with a UK keyboard in an en-gb setting deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> - 2016-09-26 19:10 +0200

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