MDK 10 & KDE 3.2 keyboard layout

[rlemp]

Hi to everybody!

 

Recently I upgraded from MDK 9.1 to 10.0 and everything is fine so far.

There is an old issue, which I couldn't solve nor under 9.1 neither with

the 10.0 version: Writing with cyrillic (Russian) characters inside

KDE 3.2.

 

I use a Swedish keyboard layout and want to write in KDE (Open Office,

KOffice, Kmail, Konqueror and Mozilla) with cyrillic characters. The

character set is AFAIK according ISO-8859-5. I do not want to write in the

Terminal mode, just inside KDE and KDE-based applications.

 

During the MDK-install I installed everything available in Russian, so the

character sets and the help files. Yesterday, when playing with the

settings I managed to get all windows displayed (I couldn't write) in

Russian, which I changed back to Latin characters, as I'm not capable

reading and writing in Russian - it's for my wife.

 

I tried to switch the keyboard layout to Russian (phonetic), but this option

is not possible inside the KDE-control center; the Russian keyboard layout

is grey and not working. I only get in the taskbar a small grey icon saying

'err' with bold small letters. Usually, using the Swedish layout, it says

'se', which is correct.

 

So I tried something weired: The Georgian layout, which I did not install

(as far as I know) and it worked fine. I got a lot od strange characters

(some mixture between Thai and Hebrew), but at least it does something.

 

I want to have everything (menues etc.) in Latin letters, I only want to be

able to write in Russian sometimes, just by switching the keyboard layout.

 

I read a lot of google articles but they mainly deal with the total

russification of a western machine, not very helpful. BTW: In Windows I

solved the problem by using a small external software which shows me a

small keyboard in the foreground when writing cyrillic. But this machine I

will return end of the year, so I must find an appropriate solution for

Linux.

 

What's wrong here?

 

Any help is appreciated.

 

Best regards

 

/Reinhard

[devries]

Use the Mandrake Control Center for this. I think only root can switch keyboard layouts and the KDE control center doesnt allow this.

 

Good luck

edit: forget what I said: in the KDE control center select Russian (ru), then 'press add>>>>' and then apply, that will do it. I got the little flag now in my systray ad by clicking it I can swich between us international and russian.

 

He.......... I learned something today :)

Edited July 23, 2004 by devries

[rlemp]

Hi again devries!

 

Thanks a lot, I got the same result as you. The thing is that I don't want the layout 'Russian (ru)', I need the other one, the 'Russian (phonetic cyrillic) (ru_yawerty)', which is more convenient, as it generates the same characters as on my latin keyboard.

 

If I use the suggested (ru) type and press 'asdf' I get in (ru): '????', which means translated into latin 'f soft v a' (the '?' is a softmaker). But I would like to see '????', since this corresponds to the latin (pronunciation).

 

If I use the 'Russian (phonetic cyrillic) (ru_yawerty)' I get the earlier described error in the task bar and my Swedish layout is still going on. So I suppose I have to edit the keyboard's config file for 'Russian (phonetic cyrillic) (ru_yawerty)' in order to make it work. Do you have an idea where it's stored in the file system?

 

But anyway, already a small progress!

 

Thanks in advance.

 

Hälsningar

 

/Reinhard

[devries]

I googled a bit and found http://www.mepis.org/node/view/814

 

Look for a post by someone named Boris (the title of his post is International Keyboard (Russian))

 

Good luck

[rlemp]

Hi!

 

I tried your suggestion but it didn't work. But I found now another workaround: Instead using the layout ru_yawerty I use now the standard Russian (ru) layout and use the subvariant phonetic (see button in the corner down right). That does pretty the same as ru_yawerty.

 

Thanks for the hints.

 

Regards

 

/Reinhard