Re: [OLPC New Zealand] Māori Macrons & olpc keyboard

[Walter Bender]

On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 8:12 AM, Jerry Vonau <jerry at laptop.org.au> wrote:
>
>
> On 24 June 2013 06:43, Walter Bender <walter.bender at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Which build are you running? In the latest Sugar builds, there is a
>> keyboard settings control panel section. We could probably backport it
>> to your build if it is reasonably recent.
>>
>
> In OLPC's & Dextrose's versions of sugar the sugar-cp-keyboard rpm doesn't
> get installed. Think there is a conflict over the keyboard with
> olpc-configure supplied by olpc-utils.

I can poke around to see if I can get it to work.

-walter

>
> Jerry
>
>>
>> Meanwhile, we may have to make a new X keyboard symbols file for you
>> that does the right thing. Not impossible to get upstreamed.
>>
>> regards.
>>
>> -walter
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 24, 2013 at 6:53 AM, Tom Parker <tom at carrott.org> wrote:
>> > Hi,
>> >
>> > I'm looking at how you enter a macron for Māori language users.
>> >
>> > It seems that the olpc us international keyboard binds a ̄  COMBINING
>> > MACRON
>> > (unicode U+0304) to algr + hyphan. When typed after the letter a you get
>> > ā
>> > which is similar to but not the same as ā LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH
>> > MACRON
>> > (unicode U+0101).
>> >
>> > Issues I've noted with a small amount of testing:
>> >
>> > On older builds, Write does not correctly load files containing the
>> > combining macron.
>> > The combining macron is not rendered at the correct height for lower
>> > case
>> > letters. (on older builds this seems to be the case all the time, on
>> > newer
>> > builds, it is rendered correctly after loading a file until you delete a
>> > following character the on the same line, then it jumps up)
>> > You can have more than one combining macron, they stack.
>> > You have to delete twice, once to delete the macron and again to delete
>> > the
>> > character.
>> >
>> > Have these issues come up before? I don't see any. I will raise tickets
>> > for
>> > the bugs rendering the macron in the latest version of write shortly.
>> > I'm
>> > not sure if anyone wants a ticket for older builds? Obviously stacking
>> > macrons is by-design when using the combining macron character (see
>> > https://twitter.com/glitchr_/ for more improbable outcomes of combining
>> > characters, perhaps your browser will crash).
>> >
>> > I haven't yet experimented with entering the ā U+0101 characters into
>> > sugar
>> > (tomorrow!)
>> >
>> > Apparently on Windows, the Māori keyboard is set up such that when you
>> > hit
>> > the grave (apparently this is what I have always called the backtick)
>> > key
>> > and then one of the vowels, you get the macron version of the vowel. I
>> > haven't seen this in action but Māori typists claim it is very
>> > efficient.
>> >
>> > Gnome on Ubuntu on my laptop binds right-alt-a to ā U+0101 when using
>> > the
>> > Māori keyboard layout. I'm not sure how Maori typists feel about this
>> > inconsistency with windows.
>> >
>> > When you choose the language in sugar, can this change the keyboard
>> > layout
>> > too? If not, what is the recommended way to configure this?
>> >
>> > How complex is it to change the localization of the keyboard for the
>> > Maori
>> > language? The xkb files don't look too complicated. Is the grave - vowel
>> > =
>> > macron vowel possible while still preserving the backtick for shell
>> > scripting? I haven't seen the laptops in question but I'm told they have
>> > the
>> > Australian simplified key caps, so changing the existing alt-gr mappings
>> > to
>> > render macron vowels (ie to mimic the Maori keyboard option on
>> > Gnome-Ubuntu)
>> > instead of the existing mappings won't confuse the key caps.
>> >
>> > Obviously touching all the laptops to change how the keyboard works is a
>> > pain and the change is potentially erased by future updates.
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Devel mailing list
>> > Devel at lists.laptop.org
>> > http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Walter Bender
>> Sugar Labs
>> http://www.sugarlabs.org
>> _______________________________________________
>> OLPC-NZ mailing list
>> OLPC-NZ at lists.laptop.org
>> http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/olpc-nz
>
>



--
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org