Subject: Re: bug#40273: installer: No way to input Latin characters with non-Latin keyboard layouts

From: "pelzflorian (Florian Pelz)" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 2020 12:44:49 +0200

On Sat, Mar 28, 2020 at 08:45:05PM +0100, Mathieu Othacehe wrote:
> Maybe we could add a help menu with <F1> key shortcut. From that
> help menu, one could change the current keyboard layout from any
> installation step?
> 

Yes, that is definitely a good place, *but* now that I saw Debian, it
would be good to additionally have a key combination.  I think
switching in an F1 help menu is more discoverable and having both
would be good.

>From what an Arab friend told me, they are used to a key combination
(Alt+Shift if I remember correctly, as is Debian’s default; Debian
makes the combination configurable).  But I cannot figure out how to
make loadkeys use a key combination; ckbcomp seems not to produce
right results.

In QEMU on the compatibility console I ran “sendkey ctrl-alt-f3“.  I
then tried:

guix environment --ad-hoc console-setup #so I can run ckbcomp
mkdir -p /usr/share/X11/
cd /usr/share/X11
ln -s $(guix build -S console-setup)/Keyboard/ckb xkb
ckbcomp ar, -variant azerty, -option grp:toggle > ~/test
loadkeys us #so I can switch back, I hoped, but it does not work
loadkeys ~/test

But now I can only type Arabic.  Maybe it is because of QEMU.

I tried changing the keyboard-layout in /etc/config.scm, but then I
can no longer type my password.

Regards,
Florian