GNU bug report logs - #43830
keyboard layout handling incompatible with rest of the OS

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From: Paul Pogonyshev <pogonyshev <at> gmail.com>
To: Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net>
Cc: 43830 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#43830: keyboard layout handling incompatible with rest of the OS
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2020 22:08:38 +0200

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> You said this issue was successfully solved by other applications tens of
> years ago.  Do these apps allow you typing physical key '/' to get '.'
> while keeping invoking C-/, M-/ shortcuts?  I know no such applications,
> they all invoke C-. and M-., not C-/ and M-/.

Actually, I admit I haven't even thought about that. Not many apps have
so many shortcuts that they run out of letters, so I just assumed that they
work by physical key. But a quick test shows mixed results:

* KDE and GTK+ (at least Gimp) seem to work like `reverse-im', i.e. they
don't bind to physical keys, but to characters.

* LibreOffice and IntelliJ IDEA work like I described, i.e. as desired for
me.

* I also discovered that even some ancient X programs (xedit) are smart
enough to hande Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Ы the same, but I have no idea how to
test Ctrl-. there.

My subconciousness doesn't distinguish between letter and non-letter keys,
it remembers shorcuts by physical position of the keys. That's why I think
the second approach (i.e. LibreOffice's and IDEA's) is better.

> But in Emacs you can do everything you want.  If `reverse-im'
> doesn't handle this automatically, you can redefine key mappings for
> '/', 'C-/' and 'M-/' manually (using some code from `reverse-im').

Can I do that automagically somehow, given that I switch keyboard layout
three times a minute when I type? Doing it once won't help anything, since
that would break shortcuts for English layout, and I want them work the
same in _all layouts_.

Paul

On Wed, 7 Oct 2020 at 21:25, Juri Linkov <juri <at> linkov.net> wrote:

> >> All these problems are because of mismatch between your X layout and
> >> your Emacs input method.  Emacs doesn't know the X layout, so you need
> >> to define it in Emacs by adapting an existing input method,
> >> or defining different keys manually.
> >
> > Sorry, I don't understand. I also don't see anything about this in the
> > documentation (README).
> >
> > I want physical key that is '/' in English to type '.' in Russian
> (because
> > that is what it does in russian-computer), but invoke shortcuts bound to
> > C-/, M-/ etc. Is that possible with `reverse-im'?
>
> You said this issue was successfully solved by other applications tens of
> years ago.  Do these apps allow you typing physical key '/' to get '.'
> while keeping invoking C-/, M-/ shortcuts?  I know no such applications,
> they all invoke C-. and M-., not C-/ and M-/.
>
> But in Emacs you can do everything you want.  If `reverse-im'
> doesn't handle this automatically, you can redefine key mappings for
> '/', 'C-/' and 'M-/' manually (using some code from `reverse-im').
>

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