Re: [Bug-apl] Keyboard layout alternative

[Juergen Sauermann]

Hello David,

thank you very much for this information.

For me as an APL newcomer it did not matter too much on which plane the
APL characters live, and as vi user I was not aware of the problems that
my xmodmap causes problems for emacs users.

I have seen postings on an emacs mailing list that propose setxkbmap, which
apparently supports some APL keyboard layouts already. It did not work
out of the box on my machine because I am still on Ubuntu 10.4, but it 
seems work
on 12.4 without problems.

GNU APL itself is keyboard layout agnostic, as long as it receives UTF-8 
encoded
Unicode characters (from the keyboard, from a file, from an ssh login, 
or even from an
8-bit telnet connection) everyting should be fine.

I believe the best way forward is to collect the different methods 
around and to put
the descriptions and config files into a 'keyboard' directory in the 
next release of GNU APL.

⍝ Jürgen


On 11/08/2013 07:57 AM, David B. Lamkins wrote:
> Here's a slight correction/clarification:
>
> Using the Right Alt key to select the APL layout is a poor choice, as
> the same key is (by default) the shift for additional characters in the
> layout.
>
> A better choice might be to use the Menu key to select the APL layout.
> In this case, the key would be a toggle. (You can see the current layout
> in the keyboard widget.)
>
> The 3rd level shift then defaults to the Right Alt key, still leaving
> the Left Alt free for GNOME and Emacs.
>
> The Right Ctrl key is another reasonable choice for the 3rd level shift.
>
>
> On Thu, 2013-11-07 at 21:11 -0800, David B. Lamkins wrote:
> > As an alternative to the apl.xmodmap provided with GNU APL, GNOME and
> > Ubuntu users may use the following technique to enable an APL keyboard.
> >
> >  From a user (not root) shell, do
> >
> > $ gsettings set org.gnome.libgnomekbd.desktop load-extra-items true
> >
> > This will enable the keyboard layout applet to show layouts which are
> > defined but not normally displayed, including APL layouts.
> >
> > The following layouts apply to various APLs:
> >
> > apl2
> > APL Keyboard Symbols
> > aplplusII
> > aplx
> > dyalog
> > dyalog without box or op-codes
> > sax
> >
> > To add a layout, follow these steps:
> >
> >    1. Find the layout dialog via either the Keyboard applet or the Region
> > and Language applet.
> >    2. Click the '+' button, then choose an appropriate (see below) APL
> > layout.
> >    3. Click the 'Options' button and set the 'Key(s) to change layout'. I
> > prefer 'Right Alt (while pressed)' since it leaves the Left Alt free as
> > a meta key for Emacs and GNOME.
> >
> > The first time these settings are changed, it may be necessary to log
> > out and back in for GNOME's UI to render the keyboard indicator's menu
> > properly.
> >
> > I haven't done enough research to know for certain which keyboard layout
> > is best suited for GNU APL. My initial guess is to use the apl2 layout.
> >
> > Note that all of the above depends upon use of a reasonably recent
> > GNU/Linux release. I believe that Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian 6 are both new
> > enough, but I haven't attempted to find out where APL layouts were first
> > introduced.
> >
> > The following thread (which is where I learned this technique) says that
> > APL keyboard layouts are supported in other GNU/Linux releases:
> >
> > http://forums.dyalog.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=210