XFree86 4.1 a ceska klavesnice 3 [long]

[Kamil Toman]

Myslim, ze i pres roztrzky jsme v diskuzi trochu pokrocili. Z Xove konference
se nikdo neozyval (resi tam ted dost vasnive problemy okolo unicode), tak 
jsem poprosil o vyjadreni Ivana Pascala (clen X core-teamu, autor xxkb).

I kdyz vetsinu z tech veci jsme vlastne uz diskutovali, prosim ty, ktere
zajima <b>jak to lip resit do budoucna</b>, aby si jeho vyjadreni (a napady)
peclive precetli.

Diky,

Kamil Toman

Forwarded message:
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  Yes, I have read this message in i18n list.
(I hoped somebody else can say own thoghts about it.)

  What can I say is ...

  There are at least two ways to solve this problem.
1. Make special application that will
   - have own config with list of all needed layouts
   - grab desired key combination
   - reload xkb map to server.
  Such application can be quite simple becouse XKB allow to request to
"load keyboard by name". The application need only convert model/layout/etc.
representation to "component names" representation (as setxkbmap do).
  But I don't know how its key garbs will interfere with WM key grabs.
2. The second approach is use XKB capability to store up to 4 groups (layouts)
in the one keymap and switch between groups.
  But note that it limits a number of layouts by four.

  If you think that it's enought for usual work I can say about other problems
of this approach.

  The XKB itself allow to have four groups (up to four) but "configuring
software" (xkbcomp, setxkbmap, Xserver config parser) has lack of
functionality to make it handly.
  I mean that they don't allow to combine complete map from single
layout maps easy. If you have, for example, map (xkb_symbols file) with
Cyrillic keysyms the group number where those keysyms are placed specified
in file explicitly. So if we want allow users place this layout into any
XKB group (one wants to have it as secong group but one anoter - as third one)
we need to have four variation of this file with different group number in it.
Otherwise they need to make desired complete map manualy.

  Another solution (besides having four map for one layout) is to add to
xkbcomp ability to relocate data from single xkb_symbols file to needed group.
For example, symbols part of keymap for such xkbcomp could looks like
xkb_symbols {include "en_US(pc104)+ru:2+gr:3+il:4" }

  The next step will be change XkbLayout semantic to allow specify more
than one layout. It can be list of layout names in one layout option
XkbLayout "en,ru,gr,il"
  Or we need add "numbered layouts"
XkbLayout "en"
XkbLayout2 "ru"
XkbLayout3 "gr"
XkbLayout4 "il"

  And finally we need to rewrite most of present symbols map becouse many
maps (Latin based) often uses two groups for single layout.

  What do you think?
  I already have patches for xkbcomp for this solution (but quick&dirty).
If you consider this approach reasonable I could offer these changes
to xfree. But note that it still reqire lot of work.

-- 
 Ivan U. Pascal         |   e-mail: pascal na tsu.ru
   Administrator of     |   Tomsk State University
     University Network |       Tomsk, Russia