[ILUG] International configuration

[Brian Foster]

  | From: "Robert Bracewell" <robert_bracewell at yahoo.com>
  | Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 20:12:52 -0000
  |[ ... ]
  | Well I have recently been through the process of configuring my notebook
  | which has a German layout but as I am now in Ireland I needed support
  | for the Irish locale.

 I've also just gone through the process of enabling Euro support
 and the Irish locale on my new SuSE 7.3 system, albeit starting
 with a GB layout.  I can confirm Robert's steps below, with one
 or two comments ....

  | Briefly below are the steps I took to enable full support for accented
  | characters, Euro symbols, correct keyboard mappings etc. from a console.
  | I did have all working in X11 V4.2.0 lately but I was playing around
  | with the Fluxbox Window Manager and I have now lost the Euro and the ~
  | characters - maybe they will return if I switch back to Enlightenment...

 Robert, I'm interested it what you've done here (even if it's
 stopped working), as my X11 also isn't working --- but I _am_
 using Enlightenment ....  ;-(

  | I do not have a mainstream distro installed (instead I have an LFS
  | system - www.linuxfromscratch.com) so I cant say simply run a setup tool
  | to reconfigure it for you.

 at least in the case of SuSE, the distro tool "doesn't work"
 for all locales, including Ireland ....  ;-(   and then, many
 of the changes Robert outlines below have to be done in the
 appropriate  /etc/rc.config  or  /etc/rc.config.d/*  script,
 and then  /sbin/SuSEconfig  run ....


  | My configuration uses a bash shell so briefly below is what I did to
  | enable console support and X11 support.
  | 
  | 1. within my RC scripts I created a new script to load the correct
  | keyboard settings, this being based on the architecture (i386) and
  | keyboard layout (for me qwertz) so I have a line that says /bin/loadkeys
  | /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwertz/de-latin1-nodeadkeys.map.gz

 ditto.  I choose a different baseline map, partly due
 to my GB qwerty layout, and partly a matter of taste.


  | 2. locales can be used to make all this available within your
  | environment - within my .bash_profile I have the following lines
  | export LC_CTYPE=en_IE at euro
  | export LANG=en_IE at euro
  | export LANGUAGE=en_IE
  | export LC_MESSAGES=en_IE

 maybe(?) more complicated than necessary.
 all I had to do (or at least did) was:

   export LANG=en_IE at euro

 this is all SuSE's Support DataBase recommends.


  | 3. modify your inputrc file to configure support for 8-bit i/o. Reason
  | being most of the non-ascii character set lie outside the 7-bit range.
  | As an example I have the following:
  | set convert-meta off # do not convert 8-bit to 7-bit
  | set input-meta on    # allow input of 8-bit
  | set output-meta off  # show output in 8-bit

 no comment -- my baseline GB installation
 was like this already ....


  | 4. setting the console font - I use a small consolefont but you can
  | experiment. Within my .bash_profile I have the following:
  | if [ "${TERM}" = "linux" ]; then
  | 	/usr/bin/setfont /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts/lat9w-12.psfu.gz
  | fi
  | 
  | The reason this has an if statement around is it because it causes
  | problems under X11 when running Eterm.

 ah!  thanks, Robert, I'm fighting with that issue Right Now!
 there is definitely something bizarre with ETerm ....  ;-(

 in any case, yes, the ``lat9w'' font family (I use ``-16'')
 seems to be the best choice.


  | 5. Within X11 I modified the XF86Comfig file to contain:
  | option "XkbLayout" "de"

 I suspect this applies only to Deutsch (German) layout.

  | I also created my own Eterm user.cfg which uses an ISO 15 aware font
  | which contain Euro symbols etc.

 ah!  again, thanks Robert for the hint, as this is part of
 the issue I'm fighting at the moment.

  | But seeing as I don't seem to have support for the Euro anymore I should
  | really try and figure out what I changed.
  | 
  | If none of this makes sense then let me know and I will go into more
  | detailed instructions. I would advise tailoring the above so that you
  | place the various parts into the global /etc/profile and /etc/inputrc
  | that way you can just include them in the user files rather than having
  | to type out for all accounts.
  | --
  | RoB

 basically, there's three-ish things you need to change:

  1st, the keyboard mapping; i.e., which keystroke sequences
       generate which code.  the awkward annoyance here is
       the console and X use different schemes, so you have
       to do this twice (at least):  once for the console,
       and once for X.

  2nd, the display font; i.e., which glyph is shown for each
       of the printable codes.  again, the console and X differ,
       so this is another case of do it twice ....   ;-(

  3rd, the locale; i.e., give a hint to all localised programs
       that, e.g, the currency symbol is not the dollar ($) or
       the pound (£) but the euro (€) --- i.e, which code to use,
       and where to place it (e.g., USA $xx or Spanish(?) xx$),
       when printing a monetary amount.  the "locale" also sets
       the language et.al., so, in principle, everything "works".
       ha ha ha .....!

 in practice, lots of programs/printers/&tc need tweaks as well.
 I'm _still_ stumbling over the odd tool which needs something
 special, albeit the biggest hassle of the moment continues to
 be ETerm.

cheers!
	-blf-
--
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