Re: Setting keyboard layout on xterm

[Riza Dindir <riza.dindir%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hello Thomas,

Am using the Xresources file below

XTerm*faceName: Mono
XTerm*faceSize: 10
XTerm*vt100.locale: true
!XTerm*vt100.font: *-*-*-*-*-*-18-*-*-*-*-*-iso8859-9

When I run "xterm &", and open the right mouse menu, I have the "True
Type Fonts" checked, and the "UTF-8 Fonts" checked as well. The same
is true for the xterm invoked as "xterm -u8 &".

Also "UTF-8 Encoding" and the "UTF-8 Titles" menu items are grayed
out, or disabled.

Riza

On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 8:20 AM Thomas Dickey <dickey%his.com@localhost> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 08:06:05AM +0000, Riza Dindir wrote:
> > Hello Thomas,
> >
> > When I change the kb layout using "setxkbmap -layout tr" and get the
> > keyboard layout (with xkbprint...), I can see where the special
> > characters will be. The locations for these are correct.
> >
> > But, after changing the keyboard layout to tr, when I press the
> > "Scedilla" key it does not output anything on xterm (xterm -class
> > UXTerm, or xterm -u8). But the key labeled "Iabovedot" does output the
> > "i" character when pressed.
>
> Each non-ASCII key that I tried last night was working.
> But I started xterm using a UTF-8 encoding (via locale settings).
>
> If you examine the right-mouse menu, you may see that xterm
> is/is-not set to use UTF-8.  Normally for UTF-8, the menu items
> are selected and grayed-out.
>
> >
> > But on X applications, like firefox, I can, after changing the
> > keyboard layout (to us, or de, or tr), all the keys produce the
> > characters as expected.
> >
> > Riza
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 30, 2022 at 12:11 AM Thomas Dickey <dickey%his.com@localhost> wrote:
> > >
> > > On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 03:20:21PM -0400, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> > > > On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 05:56:09PM +0200, Martin Husemann wrote:
> > > > > On Wed, Jun 29, 2022 at 06:21:46PM +0000, Riza Dindir wrote:
> > > > > > I also changed the font for XTerm in the Xresources file, which uses
> > > > > > iso8859-9, but that does not do anything. Although the font changes,
> > > > > > the characters for that language can not be entered on xterm.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > Is there a way to do that?
> > > > >
> > > > > You need to set the environment variable LC_CTYPE to e.g. de_DE.ISO8859-15
> > > > > or de_DE.UTF-8 for german (the former giving you ISO 8859-15, the latter
> > > > > UTF8 unicode encoding), or tr_TR.ISO8859-9 or tr_TR.UTF-8 for turkish.
> > > > >
> > > > > You can see all available locales in /usr/share/locale/.
> > > >
> > > > just
> > > >       locale -a
> > >
> > > But just "locale" shows what you are actually using.
> > > On my test-account (not customized) for NetBSD 9.2,
> > > the locale command shows this in uxterm:
> > >
> > >         LANG=""
> > >         LC_CTYPE="en_US.UTF-8"
> > >         LC_COLLATE="C"
> > >         LC_TIME="C"
> > >         LC_NUMERIC="C"
> > >         LC_MONETARY="C"
> > >         LC_MESSAGES="C"
> > >         LC_ALL=""
> > >
> > > and this in xterm:
> > >
> > >         LANG=""
> > >         LC_CTYPE="C"
> > >         LC_COLLATE="C"
> > >         LC_TIME="C"
> > >         LC_NUMERIC="C"
> > >         LC_MONETARY="C"
> > >         LC_MESSAGES="C"
> > >         LC_ALL=""
> > >
> > > Since (man locale...) LC_ALL and LANG do nothing when unset, the only
> > > relevant setting for xterm is LC_CTYPE.  The other settings are used by
> > > other applications.  For UTF-8 encoding, the country-code tr_TR versus
> > > en_US.UTF-8 likewise does not matter.  It would be relevant (to other
> > > applications) if it were not UTF-8.  xterm uses the locale environment
> > > which is set outside to decide whether to use UTF-8 encoding.  It's
> > > possible to configure xterm to allow switching after startup, but most
> > > users don't want or need that.
> > >
> > > If xterm were started like this:
> > >
> > >         setenv LC_CTYPE en_US.UTF-8
> > >         xterm
> > >
> > > or
> > >
> > >         setenv LC_ALL en_US.UTF-8
> > >         xterm
> > >
> > > then the two outputs (from uxterm and xterm) would be the same.  The
> > > display (using the bitmap font) looks the same with either uxterm or
> > > xterm started with a locale tweak.  Both, by the way, use a less
> > > complete font than Debian packages for the same XLFD.  You'll probably
> > > be better off using TrueType with NetBSD.
> > >
> > > While answering this question, I set my locale as described above,
> > > and the keyboard behaved as expected when using Turkish layout.
> > > The keys (seen with "cat -v") matched the picture which I obtained
> > > using these commands:
> > >
> > >         setxkbmap -layout tr
> > >         xkbprint -color "${DISPLAY}" - | ps2pdf - > tr_keyboard_layout.pdf
> > >
> > > The "setlocale" manpage is usually the place to go to see how the locale
> > > environment variables are used.  Looking now, I see that NetBSD does
> > > this in nls(7):
> > >
> > >         The environment variable settings are queried by their priority
> > >         level in the following manner:
> > >         ...
> > >
> > > The Open Group expands on the environment variables here:
> > >
> > > https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/basedefs/V1_chap08.html#tag_08_02
> > >
> > > LANG
> > >         This variable shall determine the locale category for native
> > >         language, local customs, and coded character set in the absence
> > >         of the LC_ALL and other LC_* (LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES,
> > >         LC_MONETARY, LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME) environment variables.  This
> > >         can be used by applications to determine the language to use for
> > >         error messages and instructions, collating sequences, date
> > >         formats, and so on.
> > > LC_ALL
> > >         This variable shall determine the values for all locale
> > >         categories.  The value of the LC_ALL environment variable has
> > >         precedence over any of the other environment variables starting
> > >         with LC_ (LC_COLLATE, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, LC_MONETARY,
> > >         LC_NUMERIC, LC_TIME) and the LANG environment variable.
> > > LC_CTYPE
> > >         This variable shall determine the locale category for character
> > >         handling functions, such as tolower(), toupper(), and isalpha().
> > >         This environment variable determines the interpretation of
> > >         sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for example,
> > >         single as opposed to multi-byte characters), the classification
> > >         of characters (for example, alpha, digit, graph), and the
> > >         behavior of character classes.  Additional semantics of this
> > >         variable, if any, are implementation-defined.
> > >
> > > --
> > > Thomas E. Dickey <dickey%invisible-island.net@localhost>
> > > https://invisible-island.net
> > > ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net
>
> --
> Thomas E. Dickey <dickey%invisible-island.net@localhost>
> https://invisible-island.net
> ftp://ftp.invisible-island.net