Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

richlv · Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 12

how do i add a keyboard layout to puppylinux ?
i would like to use lv (latvian) layout on a qwerty keyboard. unfortunately, puppy does not privde it by default.

i found some instructions about downloading kbd package from kernel.org, but this package does not contain lv layout.

maybe i can use some files from slackware (i tried searching for similar layouts, but no luck).

i am interested in xwin - basically, to allow input into gnumeric, abiword & firefox, i don't care about console.

thanks.

doopdoop · Joined: 28 Jul 2005 Posts: 48 Location: Magdeburg, Germany

Here are two layouts from my Ubuntu. Follow the instructions in the post from bugs section with the German Keyboard layout.

richlv · Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 12

thanks for the files - they allow me to enter diacritic symbols... unfortunately, the wrong ones :)

i tried both layouts and different fonts (including bitstream vera from my slackware box, times new roman from microsoft) - in both cases different symbols than i had expected appeared.

both these fonts contain required symbols set and it works on slackware.

any ideas what might have gone wrong ?

doopdoop · Joined: 28 Jul 2005 Posts: 48 Location: Magdeburg, Germany

I guess, you need to activate either a specific codeset with Latvian support. The standard one is ISO-somehting-1 which is fine with most Western European language (well. the € symbol is missing).
I guess we have to switch to unicode, but I haven't fully understand how to properly implement it yet. We need to define a so called "locale" that does this. Abiword, xterm, Mozilla and newer versions of Dillo seems to be ready for it if we can set the LANG environement value to the right thing. Maybe you can help ? There seems to be great interest from even more difficult languages like Vietnamese.

richlv · Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 12

the correct charset for latvian (and also for lithuanian) is iso-8859-13.
there is a file /etc/codemap (if i remember correctly) that contains ISO-8859-1 - would changing this to -13 help anything ?

i don't think i could help a lot, but i can surely test things (mostly for latvian settings, anyway)

richlv · Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 12

well, tried playing with that file, that did not help.
also could not find any parameters to X that would change something regarding codepages - i still get wrong symbols.

what else could i try ?

Guest · Guest

I've just put a puplet together that has a almost full implementation of XFree86 I think this may help solve your key mapping problems..see announcements

richlv · Joined: 04 Aug 2005 Posts: 12

sounds interesting - though what about system requirements ? would it be slower/take more ram than tinyx ?

Guest · Guest

The system I run is a 300Mhz Dell Latitude with 128MB ram.....I can't really compare it with a Standard Puppy as my GFX chipset doesn't like kdrive...but it aint slo not as fast as a P2 or Athlon but it's good and very usable

kedit · Joined: 03 Jan 2013 Posts: 7 Location: Latvija

Any luck!?

How did You resolve this issue?

I have the same problem, can't use latvian diactric signs with qwerty keyboard!

Any idea?

kedit · Joined: 03 Jan 2013 Posts: 7 Location: Latvija

Menu | Setup | Wizard Wizard
window "Puppy Setup"
-> Change the mouse and keyboard
window "Input Wizard"
-> Advanced Xorg keyboard configuration
press button "Ok"
window "XKB Configuration Manager"
-> Layouts
dialog "Configure XKB layouts"
press button "Change"
Choose "lv Latvian"
press button "Ok"
system says "Success"

Then don't forget to press button "Yes" to activate new settings
system says "Success"

press button "Ok"

And now You are ready to write in latvian trought Right ALT+symbol Wink

p.s. I just wasted some hours learning how to create custom XKB keyboard layout, just becouse in first attemp forget/didn't notice the button "Yes" to applay new settings.