[kde-edu]: KTouch keyboard layouts...

[Yannick Gingras]

RalfGesellensetter <rgx at gmx.de> writes:

> Make entering $ or é a two step process:
> 1. Highlight Shift or '
> 2. While/After pressing Shift, change keyboard layout (as displayed on 
> screen) accordingly, i.e.:
> (i) Shift: Numbers are replaced by !"§$% etc. during hold.
> (ii) Accent: Vowels get the active Accent. Here, it might be better to 
> actually turn off dead-keys to receive a key-event - and then emulate 
> dead-key behaviour.

I think that just using different colors to highlight the keys would
be sufficient and possibly less confusing.  Correct me if I'm wrong
but the new engine displays all the characters for a given key just as
they are written on the keyboard.  As an example, on my keyboard the
key for "6" shows 2 symbols, "6" and "?", one over the other.  Is this
correct?

A simple color convention could take care or dead-keys: blue for
regular keys, white for modifiers (shift, control, alt) and green for
prefix keys that need to be typed before the regular key.  There is
still room for confusion but it is minimal.

Here is an unfortunate sequence: for "Ö" (capital O with umlaut) I
need to press shift and "¸" because the umlaut is not the primary
accent for this key, then I need to keep shift pressed before I hit
the "O" key.  My simple color convention doesn't tell if shift should
go with the accent or with the main key.  Still, someone who has
enough reason to desire to touch type should eventually figure out
this sequence, otherwise he might wish to switch to a layout that
doesn't use dead-keys.  In Québec, both the layout with and without
dead keys are popular.

I don't know any dead-key combos requiring a prefix of more than one
key; the color convention is fairly intuitive in that case.  How are
the input system for languages with a really large alphabet working?

-- 
Yannick Gingras