Bug 4575 - add multiple keysyms per keypress to xkb
Summary: add multiple keysyms per keypress to xkb
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: xorg
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Server/Input/XKB (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: x86 (IA32) Linux (All)
: high enhancement
Assignee: Daniel Stone
QA Contact: Xorg Project Team
URL:
Whiteboard: 2011BRB_Reviewed
Keywords:
: 1460 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: xorg-xkb 7913 8195
  Show dependency treegraph
 
Reported: 2005-09-23 23:18 UTC by Denis Jacquerye
Modified: 2012-08-08 19:23 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

See Also:
i915 platform:
i915 features:


Attachments
A .XCompose file (put in your home directory) (87 bytes, application/octet-stream)
2008-09-05 18:28 UTC, Simos Xenitellis
no flags Details

Description Denis Jacquerye 2005-09-23 23:18:23 UTC
It is currently impossible to have a simple XKB keyboard layout that is simple
yet flexible enough to allow to print composed characters on one keystroke or
with the help of deadkeys.

I'm dealing with languages requiring tone marking, this means they need basic
accents. That's fine for a,o,u,i,e, they can be accented with dead_key or one
keystroke. But as soon as I need the open o U+254 and the  open e U+25C, I am
force to have a different behaviour, i.e. I must composed the base with accent
with two keystrokes.

Could it be possible to have something like
"press A0" -> "print U+254 and U+301" ?

I know I could use advanced IME, but this is more than what I need.
Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator allows to have one-to-many keystroke to
characters.
Having flexible deadkeys capable of printing many characters instead of only
precomposed one would be nice too.
Comment 1 Denis Jacquerye 2006-01-08 11:41:32 UTC
from comments to bug 2693.

I'm thinking we could maybe have additions to the list of named characters
(keysyms?) like Aacute, Cyrillic_ka and the likes.
Unicode has http://www.unicode.org/Public/UNIDATA/NamedSequences.txt which is
sort of incomplete, it doesn't contain all the characters I'm dealing with for
Lingala for example and there is not process to add to it. So the best option is
for us to have such a list, add to it over time, and allow xkb to use it in
layout definitions.

Another way is through a Compose file with some kind of locale stuff.
http://malayalamlinux.sourceforge.net/input-methods/
is doing that for "ണ്‍", "ന്‍", etc. Unfortunately it seems to be local specific.
Comment 2 Daniel Stone 2006-03-05 21:13:14 UTC
i'll take this one
Comment 3 Daniel Stone 2006-03-05 21:13:23 UTC
-
Comment 4 Daniel Stone 2006-04-10 14:45:20 UTC
*** Bug 1460 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 5 Mahmoud Kassem 2007-02-23 01:05:12 UTC
Is there any updates about this issue?
Comment 6 Daniel Stone 2007-02-23 01:14:32 UTC
nope, unfortunately i've had a ton of other input stuff to do.  it's still on the todo list, and i'll post to the bug when i've looked at it, but it won't be for a little while yet.
Comment 7 Daniel Stone 2007-02-27 01:28:13 UTC
Sorry about the phenomenal bug spam, guys.  Adding xorg-team@ to the QA contact so bugs don't get lost in future.
Comment 8 Mahmoud Kassem 2007-05-23 07:19:16 UTC
Daniel, you seems too busy. Can more xorg developers be assigned to help?
Comment 9 Alan Coopersmith 2007-05-23 08:26:47 UTC
Xorg developers are volunteers - they don't get assigned, they get asked 
nicely if they have some spare time.
Comment 10 Mahmoud Kassem 2007-05-23 10:55:14 UTC
(In reply to comment #9)
> Xorg developers are volunteers - they don't get assigned, they get asked 
> nicely if they have some spare time.
> 

Sure, that's what I meant. Sorry if the wording was misunderstood and appeared not nice. I hope that more volunteers can help with this enhancement.
Comment 11 Simos Xenitellis 2008-09-05 04:18:13 UTC
I might be missing something.

I think you can already have the option to press a single key (or sequence) and produce two characters (maybe more).

Could you try

1. Create a file ~/.XCompose
2. Add 
<asterisk>                      : "#+"
3. Run

GTK_IM_MODULE=xim gedit

4. Press *

You should get '#+'. 
Is that what you are trying to achieve?

GTK+ IM has the potential to handle these as well.
Comment 12 Daniel Stone 2008-09-05 07:17:32 UTC
On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 04:18:14AM -0700, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org wrote:
> I think you can already have the option to press a single key (or sequence) and
> produce two characters (maybe more).
> 
> Could you try
> 
> 1. Create a file ~/.XCompose
> 2. Add 
> <asterisk>                      : "#+"
> 3. Run
> 
> GTK_IM_MODULE=xim gedit
> 
> 4. Press *
> 
> You should get '#+'. 
> Is that what you are trying to achieve?
> 
> GTK+ IM has the potential to handle these as well.

Sure, but doing it IM-side eliminates the potential to have this working
properly in multiple layouts where the engravings require two keysyms.
Comment 13 Simos Xenitellis 2008-09-05 18:28:57 UTC
Created attachment 18699 [details]
A .XCompose file (put in your home directory)

I attach a sample .XCompose, with the compose sequences,

<Multi_key> <minus> <minus>     : "$" dollar
<asterisk>                      : "#+"
<dead_acute> <t>                : "t́"

The third sequence, if you have a layout active that allows to type dead_acute, allows you to press dead_acute + t, and you get t́. Obviously, there is no precomposed t with acute in Unicode yet, and this is actually two characters ('t' + 0x301) that are printed.
Comment 14 Simos Xenitellis 2008-09-05 18:31:36 UTC
(In reply to comment #12)
> On Fri, Sep 05, 2008 at 04:18:14AM -0700, bugzilla-daemon@freedesktop.org
> wrote:
> > I think you can already have the option to press a single key (or sequence) and
> > produce two characters (maybe more).
> > 
> > Could you try
> > 
> > 1. Create a file ~/.XCompose
> > 2. Add 
> > <asterisk>                      : "#+"
> > 3. Run
> > 
> > GTK_IM_MODULE=xim gedit
> > 
> > 4. Press *
> > 
> > You should get '#+'. 
> > Is that what you are trying to achieve?
> > 
> > GTK+ IM has the potential to handle these as well.
> 
> Sure, but doing it IM-side eliminates the potential to have this working
> properly in multiple layouts where the engravings require two keysyms.
> 

I have read this a few times; I might be doing something wrong, but I do not have experience with the case you are describing. If you can give more information (example), I would really appreciate it.
Comment 15 Daniel Stone 2012-08-08 18:45:09 UTC
Fixed in xkbcommon, which has new syntax like:
  key <HELO> { [ h, i, { h, e, l, l, o }, { H, E, L, L, O } ] };

to produce 'h' from level 1, 'i' from level 2, 'hello' from level 3, and 'HELLO' from level 4.
Comment 16 Khaled Hosny 2012-08-08 19:11:04 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> Fixed in xkbcommon, which has new syntax like:
>   key <HELO> { [ h, i, { h, e, l, l, o }, { H, E, L, L, O } ] };
> 
> to produce 'h' from level 1, 'i' from level 2, 'hello' from level 3, and
> 'HELLO' from level 4.

Great! So, should we submit patches now to layout definitions to use this new syntax instead of old hacks?
Comment 17 Daniel Stone 2012-08-08 19:17:37 UTC
Heh, the problem is that it's not yet supported in X11 ... :)

Getting it supported in X11 will take a new protocol (XKB2, although this is a lot more simple than previously thought), as well as getting toolkits to migrate to libxkbcommon rather than using the libX11 XKB APIs, which don't support this in any way.

So, er, sadly it's a little way off.  But at least part of the infrastructure is there!
Comment 18 Khaled Hosny 2012-08-08 19:23:23 UTC
I see, big step forward nevertheless.


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