[B-Greek] Adding accents in Linux
Timothy S. Nelson
wayland at wayland.id.au
Fri Jan 22 18:58:59 EST 2010
On Fri, 22 Jan 2010, peter pankonin wrote:
> Greetings, all:
>
> Since we're discussing Greek keyboards "off-list" ;)
>
> ...does anyone know how to type the accented letters in Linux? I'm
> currently having to copy and paste from kcharselect to type the
> accented letters.
Why, yes, I do know how to type accented characters in Linux :).
Obviously my dithering has resolved into recording my startling
insights for posterity :).
> I'm guessing the keyboard combinations suggested by Randall are for a
> Windows computer...I haven't been able to find anything similar in
> Linux. Thanks.
Linux (Well, Fedora 11, anyway) has built-in support for a wide
variety of keyboard layouts, and it is entirely possible to define your own
should you dislike the existing ones.
Linux groups its keyboard layouts by language. There are 6 different
Greek layouts available.
- Bare -- useless; no punctuation
- Simple -- All the others are based on this, so you probably want one
of them, because they all have more characters
- Basic -- Despite the name, this is probably the one you want. I use
it. It does polytonic. It does ϝ (ϝαυ, "digamma"). It does
iota-subscript: ᾳ. It does more stuff than any of the others.
Unfortunately, though, you still need to know Greek to type anything
intelligible
- Extended -- This is like "Simple", but with a few extra currency,
mathematical, and copyright symbols
- Polytonic -- this is like extended, with a few extra things to support
polytonic. I still recommend the "Basic" layout, because it does all
this and more
- No Dead Keys -- no polytonic; don't use it
This brings to my mind a few things about Linux keyboards you may need
to know.
1. Distro/desktop specific: There are different instructions depending on
what distro you're on, and what desktop environment you use. For
example, I use Fedora with E17, but you might use Ubuntu with Gnome or
something. I'll need to know what you're using before I can give more
specific advice.
2. Multiple layouts: The way linux works, you can have multiple layouts
installed at the same time, and use a special key-combination to
switch between them.
3. Level-3 shift: The way most non-English keyboards work, they have a
"Level 3 shift", which instead of allowing them to type two characters
(upper and lower case) with the one key, it allows them to type 4.
For example, on my Greek keyboard, I can get the following from one key:
Normal: γ
Shift: Γ
Level3: ϝ
Shift+Level3: Ϝ
If you want to type polytonic Greek or Iota subscripts, then you'll
need to use Level 3 characters. Note that on my Greek layout, the
left Alt key acts as an Alt key, whereas the right-hand Alt key acts
as the Level 3 shift.
4. Dead keys: The way Linux handles the problem of accents is called
"dead keys". Basically, you press the accent key first (and nothing
visible happens, hence the 'dead'), and then you press the letter
after, and then the accented letter appears. This also applies to
iota subscript and the like.
5. Multiple keyboards: Linux can handle multiple keyboards. I have an
ordinary (well, ordinary layout extra-special features) keyboard, and
I also got a cheap USB keyboard for typing non-English. What I have
it configured for at the moment is: us(intl),gr(basic),il(biblical).
I also got some keyboard stickers from Hooleon for Greek and Hebrew
(make sure you get a colour that contrasts with your keyboard keys),
although unfortunately the keyboard stickers only do the letters;
you'll have to mark the accents yourself. Anyway, all this
means that my normal keyboard behaves exactly like keyboards
everywhere in Australia and the USA, whereas my non-English keyboard,
as well as doing Greek, can also do Hebrew, and with the us(intl)
layout, I can type most of the languages of Western Europe (líké ðíß).
The main problem with secondary keyboards is that some of the keyboard
configuration programs don't handle them. But in that case, let me
know, and I'll try to figure something out for you :).
HTH,
---------------------------------------------------------------------
| Name: Tim Nelson | Because the Creator is, |
| E-mail: wayland at wayland.id.au | I am |
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