Add Esperanto chars to keyboard layout [patch]

[J. Pablo Fernández]

Binary package hint: xkb-data

Hello,

I'm attaching a patch for the us file of symbols, to add two more layouts for Qwerty and Dvorak which add a very simple way for the casual Esperanto typist to type Esperanto's non-ASCII characters. This really can solve many of the problems of typing Esperanto in Ubuntu. I implore you to include this patch.

Thank you.

[Luís Oliveira (luismbo)]

I like this method of typing ĥŝĝĉĵŭ, it's what I've been using for a couple of years. It'd be more useful, if it could be attached to whatever layout (as long as it's a latin layout, I suppose) through the "Keyboard Layout Options" dialog. (The one that lets you swap Ctrl and Caps Lock, etc.)

This is definitely a step forward, though.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

That should be possible to some extent, and it shouldn't be that hard. In my opinion, features like adding euro to e, break when you switch to a layout like Esperanto or USA - Dvorak. So it's hard to me to test my own work if the reference is broken. I may look into it when I have more free time. At the moment I'm trying to create some packages to put in my PPA, so people can start using these layouts without having to apply any patches or wait for some possible inclusion in future Ubuntus.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

I'm attached the patch I've used to create packages that include the new layouts. I've created packages for it in my PPA: https://launchpad.net/~pupeno/+archive

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Created an attachment (id=19777)
add_eo_chars.diff

A ubuntu bug reporter provided the attached patch to add two more layouts for Qwerty and Dvorak, to provide a new mechanism for easily typing esperanto characters.

I'd like to see this reviewed and incorporated upstream if it makes sense and looks acceptable, rather than for us to carry it in Ubuntu. Please let us know what you think of it.

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xkeyboard-config/+bug/245911

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Hi J. Pablo,

I've forwarded your patch upstream to https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18142 for their review. I would like to see it accepted by them, rather than for us to carry it only for Ubuntu. Would you mind subscribing to the upstream bug, in case they have additional questions? Thanks ahead of time.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

I've created the patch. The purpose is to provide a way to type Esperanto characters without changing the layout. This is very useful for people that are not working all the time in Esperanto, but want to type Esperanto from time to time. Basically the third level group or whatever is called for each letter has the corresponding letter with supersigno (hat).
Ideally, this should be a keyboard modifier that can be applied to any keyboard, like the Euro stuff, but honestly, I couldn't make that work so I couldn't develop it.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

1. Your base version of xkeyboard-config is rather old. Could you please base your patch against the latest version (preferable - git)
2. You are patching symbols/us. But there is already symbols/epo - would you have a look at it please?

Thanks

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Bryce,

Thank you for submitting the bugs upstream, I'll add some information there. Even then, would it be possible to get on Ubuntu so this feature gets sooner to Ubuntists?

Thanks.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

It's too late to include for Intrepid. I would encourage you to work with upstream to get it included there, and then we can pull it in through our normal sync process.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Hello,

The epo layouts, I understand, are for cases where Esperanto is the main language. But this patch is for when Esperanto is the second language and it is used only sporadically, and where the main language is English.

Where is the Git repository so I can update the patch?

Thanks.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XKeyboardConfig/Development

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Created an attachment (id=20687)
Patch adding eo characters

This is a much better patch that the one before because it separates the Esperanto characters from the layouts and adds them as options which could be added to any layout. Like the eurosign.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Oh, and the last patch is for version 1.3. Hope that's recent enough.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

I DO like the idea to have it as an option. But in that case I'd drop the variants of 'us' layout.
Also, patching base.lst is redundant. And finally - why not just add symbols to symbols/epo file?

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

I hesitated about adding the US layouts, as I'm making Ubuntu packages out of this patch, I maintained the US for backwards compatibility. I'll create another patch and I'll send it.
I also considered adding it to the epo file, I'll do that as well. But I'll do it as a git patch.
Also, epo is the three letter code for Esperanto, but all the other languages use a two letter code. Would you accept if I move (as a separated git patch) epo to eo?
Thanks.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

> I also considered adding it to the epo file, I'll do that as well. But I'll do
> it as a git patch.
No problem.

> Also, epo is the three letter code for Esperanto, but all the other languages
> use a two letter code. Would you accept if I move (as a separated git patch)
> epo to eo?
Please do not do that. I intentionally use 3-letter filenames for all layouts which are not country-based. Like Esperanto.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

I've ported the changes to the Git repository. You can pull from here: git://github.com/pupeno/xkeyboard-config.git

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

No problem, haven't renamed epo.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Just as a shortcut, this is my patch:

http://github.com/pupeno/xkeyboard-config/commit/3dd391ecec25a825dee770e8a10c233b8cba70d5

If you see anything wrong there, just let me know and I'll fix it.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

Two issues: no need to patch Makefile.am - and base.o_s.part still refers to the esperanto file.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Fixed and pushed.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

It is all fine on the web, but it is all colored etc. How could I get your patches in plain text (without git pull, which somehow fails for me)

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Created an attachment (id=20692)
First git patch

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Created an attachment (id=20693)
Second git patch

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Those are the two patches as created by git format-patch origin, I'm not sure how else to generate them, but they should be directly importable into a git repo with git am I believe.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

Just sweet! Thanks, committed.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Luís Oliveira, wish granted!

It is now a layout option. You can have this new feature in the version 1.3 ~ppa5, in my PPA, which is only for Intrepid though. I haven't it backported to Hardy. I'd consider it if it's requested bad enough (or requested).

Also, we are in the process of integrating it upstream https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18142 , so, thankfully, all these packages will be obsolete soon.

[Luís Oliveira (luismbo)]

On Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 4:14 PM, J. Pablo Fernández <email address hidden> wrote:
> Luís Oliveira, wish granted!
>
> It is now a layout option.

Sounds great! Thanks a lot.

--
Luís Oliveira
http://student.dei.uc.pt/~lmoliv/

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

It's been integrated upstream. Now that it's been integrated upstream, would you consider integrating it in Ubuntu?

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Sergey,

After using this patch for some days I've realized something. At least with Ubuntu you can have only one global set of layout options. It means that you can set one of the two. If you are like me and you switch between Dvorak and Qwerty, then you have a problem. Is this an Ubuntu limitation or an Xorg limitation? If it is an Xorg limitation, then it might make sense to add two USA layouts with Esperanto keyboard.
What do you think?

Thanks.

[Simos Xenitellis  (simosx)]

(In reply to comment #20)
> Sergey,
>
> After using this patch for some days I've realized something. At least with
> Ubuntu you can have only one global set of layout options. It means that you
> can set one of the two. If you are like me and you switch between Dvorak and
> Qwerty, then you have a problem. Is this an Ubuntu limitation or an Xorg
> limitation? If it is an Xorg limitation, then it might make sense to add two
> USA layouts with Esperanto keyboard.
> What do you think?

It is not clear what exactly is not working.
Are you unable to use shortcuts (such as Alt+F to open the File menu)?
Are you unable to type individual keys?

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

No, the problem is this. I have two layouts: "USA" and "USA Dvorak" and switch between them. Now, which one should I use? "Esperanto for Qwerty" or "Esperanto for Dvorak"? one of the two is going to be wrong some times, while having "USA Esperanto" and "USA Dvorak Esperanto" works all the time.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

We can leave it to the user - as 2 options?

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

But as I see, the user has no way of choosing the Qwerty Esperanto layout option for the Qwerty keyboard *and* the Dvorak Esperanto layout option for the Dvorak keyboard because the layout options are global, not per keyboard layout.

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

It is even worse than that. Options are not global. They are applied to the first layout (unless they mention groups>=2 explicitly). There is separate bug to make options _really_ global.

But it does not affect my unwillingness to create slightly bloatish Dvorak variants for US layout.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

That's most unfortunate. Where can I submit those other bugs? (that is, inability to set up layout options per keyboard).

[Sergey V. Udaltsov (svu)]

Option per layout? Here. Against xorg (component Input/XKB I guess). When you file that bug - please put the number here in comments.

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

Ok, made the other report: #19004

[J. Pablo Fernández (pupeno)]

I've created updated packages in my ppa (http://pupeno.com/miscellaneous/my-ppa) which now includes two patches. One is directly imported from upstream. The other one uses those layout options to create the USA layouts, which were not accepted upstream. Without the USA layouts due to a bug on Xorg (https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=19004), and maybe Ubuntu (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/305309) the other patch is useless.

[Bryce Harrington (bryce)]

Okay, sounds like there are additional issues around the fringe (for which separate bug reports have been filed - thanks) but that the core request is resolved and available in Ubuntu Jaunty. Closing as fixed. Feel free to reopen and clarify if I am assuming incorrectly.

[Benno Schulenberg (bennoschulenberg)]

Closing; this bug was fixed long ago. This also fixed bug #8585.
It does not depend on bug #19004 which is about having options per layout --
although a fix for that bug would make this fix more useful for some people.