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From: David Dawes <dawes@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au>
Message-Id: <199701250755.SAA06028@rf900.physics.usyd.edu.au>
Subject: Re: How to type French characters into Netscape?
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.3.95.970123160103.14787A-100000@aris> from Jake Hamby at "Jan 23, 97 04:23:57 pm"
To: hamby@aris.jpl.nasa.gov
Date: Sat, 25 Jan 1997 18:55:03 +1100 (EST)
Cc: hackers@freebsd.org, XFree86@xfree86.org
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>(I'm CC'ing this question to FreeBSD-hackers as well as XFree86 because it
>seems to be more of a FreeBSD/Netscape related question now that I've
>figured out the XFree86 angle)
>
>Thanks to those who responded to my initial query, now I am able to type
>the French accented characters in XFree86 (instructions are given below).
>But now I have a different problem:  FreeBSD Netscape doesn't support
>the accented characters!  I'm using the Netscape-3.01 port under
>FreeBSD-current and XFree86 3.2.  When I paste, for example, an é into
>Netscape, I get nothing, when I try to type it (<right-alt> + ' + e), I
>get 'e, which isn't right either.
>
>Is there something I can figure to make Netscape's text-entry boxes 8-bit
>clean? Is it because it's an X11R5 binary?  Would using the Linux version
>of Netscape help?  If I can't figure this out, I'm just going to use my
>BeBox web browser because this X configuration nonsense has wasted too
>much of my time already! 

It is because it is an X11R5 binary.  The Linux Netscape binary seems
to be linked against R6 libraries, but when I try it on FreeBSD 2.2
it crashes early with SIGEMT (am I doing something wrong here, or is
it known to not work?).

One way that does work with the BSDI Netscape binary is to make use of
Mode_switch, and map accented characters to the 3rd and 4th keysym slots.
For example, if I do:

  xmodmap -e 'keysym a = a A aacute Aacute'

then Mode_switch + A -> aacute and Mode_switch + Shift + A -> Aacute.

If you have the "standard" XFree86 3.2 XKB settings:

   XkbRules        "xfree86"
   XkbModel        "pc101"
   XkbLayout       "us"   

You can enable various ways of switching between the first and second
pair of mappings by adding a line:

   XkbOption       "OPTION"

where "OPTION" is one if "+group(switch)", "+group(toggle)",
"+group(shift_toggle)", "+group(ctrl_shift_toggle)",
"+group(ctrl_alt_toggle)".  See the file
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/group for a description of these.

David