[kde-edu]: Question! Re: Need help revising KTouch keyboards

[Shelagh Manton]

On Wed, 2007-09-26 at 21:09 -0400, Andreas Nicolai wrote:
> Hi Anne-Marie and everyone else planning to work on keyboard files for  
> KTouch!
> 
> Sorry for the missing documentation for the keyboard editor, but here's a  
> short introduction.
> 
> At first, I didn't think much about the naming of the keyboard layouts, so  
> I guess either one of "Dvorak French" or "French (Dvorak)" would be ok.  
> I'd prefer the second one, though.
> 
> For the usage of the editor: The basic principle is that you first have to  
> click on a key to change it. Then you will see the different input widges  
> updated and the key will be highlighted in the editor. Next you set the  
> appearance of the key by typing the different key characters in the four  
> text edits. If only one character is typed to the top left, it will be  
> shown bigger (as for the normal single character keys). If more characters  
> are shown on the keyboard, the characters will be drawn smaller in each  
> corner of the key. Extra keys can be added using the Add button. Move the  
> keys by dragging them or typing in coordinates of the keys in the  
> position/geometry input widgets. In any case it is recommended to start  
> with an existing keyboard layout (load the german or english ones) and  
> simply modify the keyboard.
> 
> After the visual layout of the keyboard is complete, you need to define  
> key connectors. These are the characters that are accessible by pressing a  
> key by itself or in combination with a modifier key. For instance, on a  
> German keyboard, the key Q also has the lower case q, the upper case Q  
> (key + shift) and the @ character (key + Alt Gr). You need to define all  
> those for each key. If you defined a wrong key connection, you can delete  
> all connectors for the current key and start over.
> 
> Once complete, save the keyboard and test it with some lecture that  
> contains all characters (create one, if necessary).
> 
> Practicing language input methods is a separate issue and would be very  
> difficult to handle in a touch typing program as KTouch. From my recent  
> trip to China I know that most college students tend to learn touch typing  
> with english texts on english keyboards (there is no chinese keyboard  
> layout, the US english keyboard layout is used). And since chinese  
> characters are mostly typed using the Pinyin input method, which is typing  
> the phonetics of the chinese characters without accentuation and after  
> finishing a symbol/word selecting the correct symbol combination, knowing  
> how to type quickly on an english keyboard is the only major requirement.  
> Hence, particularly for the pinyin system a chinese practice lecture would  
> be nice, where you simply type chinese texts using pinyin, minus the  
> symbol selection part (which means pressing the left cursor key once or  
> twice and then up and down until the correct symbol appears).
> 
> Anyway, let me know if some usage questions are still left open.
> 
> Bye,
> Andreas
> 
I have a Swedish keyboard lying around but I don't speak Swedish. If
no-one else is available to do the Swedish keyboard, I will try to
tackle it. I suppose I'll have to install the Swedish locale? And then I
might not be able to understand the computer anymore. If someone is
doing the Swedish keyboard it would be better if you could do it, could
you let me know?

Shelagh