RE: Foreign Keyboard Help Needed

["Gorycki, Janusz" <Janusz Gorycki intel com>]

Hi,

I am Polish and I used to have polish keyboard layout. First of all, there
are two types of polish keyboard mappings: "standard", which nobody uses
because it is awkward ("ported" from an ancient polish typewriter layout);
and "programmer's", which is in common usage. In this mapping you get
accented characters by pressing right "Alt" with a character key (a, e, s,
c, n, o, l, z, x).

I have just tried to reinstantiate polish keyboard on my machine. It is
RedHat 7.0, but I don't think the procedure is any different on 7.2.

I have noticed that just switching keyboard layout with GKB is not enough.
You also have to set the LANG environment variable to pl_PL. As an added
bonus, this also sets all your locale to polish (menu texts, dialog boxes,
date format etc.)

This works for me:

1. switch GKB to polish layout ("plain" polish, not "polish deadkeys" or
"polish xkb keymap") - this gives you the "programmer's" layout
2. try running 'LANG=pl_PL emacs' or 'LANG=pl_PL gedit' from the terminal
3. if it works, put 'export LANG=pl_PL' in your './bash_profile'

hope this helps
marcin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: William Lamb [mailto:linuxadvocate notwires com]
> Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 9:17 PM
> To: gnome-list gnome org
> Subject: Foreign Keyboard Help Needed
> 
> 
> I am trying to setup my girlfriend's father on Linux.  He is 
> Polish and
> wants to be able to compose word processing documents in Polish.  He
> bought a Windows Me computer several months ago and has had a very bad
> time with it, so I figured this would be a good chance to 
> make a convert
> to Linux. ;-)
> 
> I have set up the computer with Ximian Gnome running on Red 
> Hat 7.2.  My
> problem is that I cannot figure out how to get the Polish 
> characters to
> work.  When I installed Red Hat, I checked the box for Polish to be
> supported and I know that ISO 8859-2 fonts are installed.  I have also
> installed the GKB (Gnome KeyBoard) applet for choosing 
> between keyboard
> mappings and I have all 3 Polish keyboards plus US english 
> installed on
> it.  I have tried numerous different key combinations in several
> different word processing programs and I still have not been able to
> produce the dotted z, slashed l or any other characters 
> specific to the
> 8859-2 character set.
> 
> Can someone who uses non-8859-1 character sets tell me how to set this
> up and how to produce these characters?  What word processing programs
> do you use?  What are the key combinations you use to produce the
> accented characters?  Did I miss something in the setup?
> 
> Thanks very much for your help,
> 
> Bill Lamb
> Chicago, USA
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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