Re: Latin-American APL keyboard layout?

[Otto Diesenbacher-Reinmüller]

Hi APLer,

let me propose another approach - don't fiddle with keyboard layouts
anymore to get APL-symbols. I think this is a bite reflex from the
past - APL symbols → I need a specific keyboard layout.

Most operating systems offer compose keys, and they are much easier to
configure, and independent of keyboard layouts.

For example X-Window: just put a proper .XCompose file into your home
directory, restart you application and you are done. You don't even
need to restart XWindow.

MacOS: ~/Library//KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict is similar.

I chose "." as my compose key, so hitting ".:" results in ≡. ".a" is
⍺, etc. I don't have to think about keyboard layouts. Hitting '.e' is
'∊', no matter which layout, Dvorak, Qwerty, etc.

For more information and my sample .Xcompose and
DefaultKeyBinding.dict see my blog-post at
https://diesenbacher.net/blog/entries/apl-symbols.html

Regards,

– okflo

From: Peter Teeson
Subject: Re: Latin-American APL keyboard layout?
To: Russtopia
Cc: bug-apl
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2022 18:40:08 +0200

There is this marvellous utility that I have used. It might be helpful. https://software.sil.org/ukelele/

If the user is on an Apple Mac then this extract from the Installation Guide may be helpful.

Keyboard Setup

To make the keyboard work correctly with the APL interpreter we need two things - a correct APL font and a mapping of the keyboard key codes. Fortunately these are both available. The fonts I used are from http://dyalog.com/apl-font-keyboard.htm. Here is a quote from that page:

This page contains resources that are believed to be of general
interest to the APL community. The fonts are freely available,
to everyone irrespective of whether you use Dyalog
(or any other APL system for that matter).

Indeed they are and we applaud Dyalog for making them available.

(1) Installing the APL Fonts. Download the APL385 font, and also APL333 if you want a proportional version. You can save them in your usual download place and manually install them. Alterately when prompted select the default Open with Font Book. Installing it in /Library/Fonts/ will make it available to all Accounts on this computer. In my case I placed it in my user account at ~/Library/Fonts/ instead. That was easy.

(2) A keyboard layout. There is one available on the same web page but it is for UK Dyalog users. For GNU APL there is a recommended one provided in the distribution which fully matches that displayed with the ]keyb command. You can find it in the support-files folder in the OS-X-keyboard folder. It is the MacAplAlt.keylayout file.

You install it by copying it to /Library/Keyboard Layouts which makes it available for all users or ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts for just that user.

(3) Terminal Settings Terminal Help gives instructions for these. However you might not want to use the defauts.. My personal preference is to make a new Profile from the Preferences Profiles menu by selecting New Window and then choosing MacAplAlt. Set the Font attributes using the Text tab in the Profiles window.

(4) Using Terminal with APL Start a Terminal window and, from the Input Source (a.k.a. Language) menu, top right on the Menu Bar, select MacAplAlt. Also select Show Keyboard Viewer from the same menu. Now you can see the key mappings; press the alt key and voila your familiar APL symbols. Try Shift+Alt to get the rest. Type apl in the terminal window and enjoy.

respect….

Peter

On Oct 12, 2022, at 9:14 AM, Dr. Jürgen Sauermann <mail@xn--jrgen-sauermann-zvb.de> wrote:

Hi Russ,

I am no expert in foreign keyboard layouts, and in particular not in Latin-American ones.
However, I found the following program in Linux Mint (and supposedly also in Ubuntu and
other GNU/Linux distributions) useful:

*gkbd-keyboard-display -l <layout>*

where <layout> is probably one of those in */usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/**

Also have a look here:

*https://kbdlayout.info/KBDLA/**
*
As a programmer I very much dislike country-specific keyboard layouts. In the 1990s,
my Swedish employer wanted me to translate a technical document from English
to German on a PC with a Swedish keyboard. Almost drove me crazy.

I would also propose that the APL characters should be the same on all keyboards.

Best Regards,
Jürgen


On 10/12/22 6:35 AM, Russtopia wrote:

Hello,

I was asked today by someone from Chile about APL layouts for Latin-American keyboards.

It seems the ; : + * " / symbols are placed differently, which would make for problematic mapping wrt. the US layout. Has anyone come up with a good 'standard' layout for this region? (Interestingly there appears to be an 'each' ¨ already there, right of the 'P' key, as shift-comma).

Dyalog's keyboard pages do not seem to address such a layout.

See an example layout here: https://howtoperu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/how-to-type-@-latin-american-keyboard.png <https://howtoperu.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/how-to-type-@-latin-american-keyboard.png>

-Russ