Dual Language

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Jim1938
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Nov 2012, 16:05

Dual Language

#1 Post by Jim1938 »

I need to be able to write in 2 languages, English and Danish.
Danish is like English, except it has 3 more characters.
This has been no problem using Windoz and Ubuntu.
I press Ctrl and Shift together and the language changes.
I can see the little icon on my panel showing which
language I'm currently using.

Now I'm using Saluki from CD, testing to see if I want Saluki.
I went to Control Panel / Keyboard Settings and selected
both English and Danish. But I could not find what keys
to use to change language. Also there is no icon on the
desktop showing which language I'm in.

What do I need to do now?

Thanks in advance.

Jim1938
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Nov 2012, 16:05

#2 Post by Jim1938 »

Now I'm trying the Precise Puppy 5.4 CD.

It provides a language switcher, but
doesn't seem to allow a bi-lingual keyboard.
I.e., I can have EN or DK, but not both checked.
To switch I must go back to setup.
Thus the switcher is useless.
Strange.
Saluki provides for multilingual keyboard,
but no switcher for switching back and forth.
Precise provides the switcher, but only one
choice for keyboard language.

In Windoz and Ubuntu this is easy peasy.
Years ago wrote the SOP for the DK users group
on how to quickly switch between languages.

It seems that Puppy in not multi-lingual as yet!!
I really wish I could get this working in Puppy so
that I don't have to go back to the slower Ubuntu clan.

Please throw this old dog a bone.

Jim b. 1938

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wimpy
Posts: 406
Joined: Wed 22 Aug 2012, 10:30
Location: Essex, UK

#3 Post by wimpy »

Thanks for dropping in on my thread. As you will see I've managed to get it going so that I can switch keyboards on the fly using the keyboard itself. I haven't an explanation as to why one set of toggle keys work and another does not - but I'm happy just to get a solution. Hope you find your answer.
LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal

Jim1938
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Nov 2012, 16:05

#4 Post by Jim1938 »

Since I need only 3 more letters in Danish than English,
is there a way in Saluki and/or Precise where keys
could be assigned these 3 special Danish letters?

For example -- could the Windoz key
along with the a-key could be used
to make the Danish circle-a (å) letter?
Win+o make the Danish slash o (ø) letter?
Win+e make the Danish ae (æ) letter?
And add the shift-key for caps?

Jim

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#5 Post by nooby »

Thanks Wimpy I read your thread

Adding a 2nd keyboard layout - SOLVED!

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=82413

Jim can you test if that one work for you?

Here in Sweden we solve this by buying Swedish keyboards
to get åäö our variants of your Danish å æ ø so that way
these chars have their own keys and no need to shift anything.

Am I right that you use an English keyboard and get the åäö
using shift instead of just pushing the separate key with the sign å
and sign ä and sign ö.

I guess it is a laptop bought outside of Denmark then because here
in Sweden all Laptops already have the right åäö in place?

So wimpy and you should be able to sort it out?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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wimpy
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Location: Essex, UK

#6 Post by wimpy »

nooby wrote:
So wimpy and you should be able to sort it out?
Just to say that I'm just a beginner. I found it surprisingly difficult to do what Jim wants, in my distro.
I tried xdotool and xbindkeys but none of them worked as I wanted them to, nor did editing of the openbox config files. With xdotool you can set up desktop icons for each of the keys you require. The invocation is " xdotool key xxxx" where "xxxx" is the character you want to output. This works OK when you click on the icon, but assigning a shortcut key to the icon didn't work. Hitting the shortcut key seemed to move away from the focused window to the icon, and nothing happened. One suggestion was that the output was going to /dev/null.
My latest effort works by switching the keyboard but it still requires in some cases 2 key strokes where one ought to do, but I can live with that since it is characteristic of the Spanish keyboard.
LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal

nooby
Posts: 10369
Joined: Sun 29 Jun 2008, 19:05
Location: SwedenEurope

#7 Post by nooby »

Yes I realized that it could be that complex
so I tried to stay totally outside of the thread.
I know too little but get sad when I see too few
try to help out.

Have you used the link in my signature. Try to feed it
with different keywords like spanish keyboard
and other such words until you find some others
that have had similar problems.

we have the localization project that try to make Puppy
work in any language should not them be aware of this need?
I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

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wimpy
Posts: 406
Joined: Wed 22 Aug 2012, 10:30
Location: Essex, UK

#8 Post by wimpy »

@Jim I tried Saluki (in the form of Simplicity) but found it hid too much from the user (somewhat like Windows) - fine when things were going right or if you had access to a private guru. The Lucid (Ubuntu based) distro, that I use, is just about right for me and as you can see it allows 2 keyboards (possibly more) as well as a switcher key. I now have 2 visual signals when I change keyboards - the scroll lock light and a country flag icon on the monitor (the icon is supplied by fbxkb). I can switch either by using the toggle key (Shift-Alt) or by clicking the fbxkb icon.
If you can't switch keyboards xdotool may be the best bet since you only need 3 desktop icons. You may find that the shortcut keys for the desktop icons actually work!! This would give you the 3 extra keys without changing keyboards - which would have been my preferred solution, if I could have got it to work in Lucid.
@nooby That link in your signature was one of the first really helpful links that I came across in my struggles with puppy. I've used it over and over again (it's my homepage :) )
LxXenial16.08, LxPupSc17.07.01,Lucid 5.2.8 and others - all frugal

Jim1938
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Nov 2012, 16:05

#9 Post by Jim1938 »

I have installed duel and triple language layouts in several distros.
Here are two I now have working on my laptop.

I don’t remember how I installed it in Crunchbang-10, but
in my Crunchbang-10 I go to etc/default/keyboard.
There I have:
XKBMODEL=

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darkcity
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#10 Post by darkcity »

What would be your ideal solution?

I quite like fbxkb - which displays a flag that swaps language layout
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/fbxkb

with uk keyboard i think its the ; @ ~ which become the extra vowels. (Alt Gr + F2 is the way to get @ in Dansk mode)

Does fbxkb work with Saluki?

What's your first language btw?

8)

Jim1938
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Nov 2012, 16:05

#11 Post by Jim1938 »

Darkcity - Thanks for the quick reply.

fbxkb is in Saluki, but I don't know how to activate it.
After I get a switcher working, then I can think about fbxkb.
I really would like an icon on my panel showing which language I'm using.
But, I haven't found a switcher as yet in Saluki. First things first.
I would like to be able to switch languages using the Ctrl+Shift keys.
I've been able to do that with Windoz, Ubuntu, and Crunchbang.
I think Wimpy was able to do it with Lucid Puppy 528.
I may try 528 later this week, if no bone is here.

Thanks
Jim

Jim1938
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Nov 2012, 16:05

#12 Post by Jim1938 »

No rest for this old dog.

Here is how I built my language switcher in Saluki.
The languages are Danish and English (US).
I was searching Control Panel and found my answer.
Go to Control Panel and XFCE Settings Editor.
Open (Under Channel) “keyboard-layout".
Click on anyone of the sub-Properties under “Default

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darkcity
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#13 Post by darkcity »

Great stuff, might be worth mentioning on the Carolina thread (fork of Saluki under active dev)

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... &start=420

8)

step
Posts: 1349
Joined: Fri 04 May 2012, 11:20

Re: Dual Language

#14 Post by step »

Jim1938 wrote:I need to be able to write in 2 languages, English and Danish. ...

Now I'm using Saluki from CD, testing to see if I want Saluki.
I went to Control Panel / Keyboard Settings and selected
both English and Danish. But I could not find what keys
to use to change language. Also there is no icon on the
desktop showing which language I'm in.
I'm on saluki 023. It seems it provides everything you need out-of-the-box. After adding a second keyboard layout menu Control Panel>Keyboard Settings>Layout, you can add a layout switcher to the panel (a.k.a. the taskbar in Windows). Right click the panel, choose Panel>Add new items...>Keyboard layouts. Done. A national flag should show up in your panel shortly. Right click the flag icon and choose Properties. In the dialog choose Change layout option, and define your preferred layout switch hotkey.

As for adding a hotkey to toggle layouts without running the Keyboard Layouts plugin, read http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions ... ce-897037/ to get some ideas. To open the hotkey manager in saluki go to menu Run Program... and type "sven" you'll get "sven hotkey configuration".

gdion
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri 01 Feb 2013, 17:10

Dual language

#15 Post by gdion »

Hi ! I'm newbie with puppy - I just installed 5.4 for test on old PIV and I<m impress by the speed of this OS.

I just red all this thread : Thank you jim1938, wimpy, darkcity. step

There will be some help there for my setup.

Just as many other peoples living in Montreal we need to work in french as in english.

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