Date: Mon, 4 Jun 2001 17:18:44 +0200 From: Gerhard Sittig <Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net> To: mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: OT keyboard layouts (was: Purchasing a new laptop...advice?) Message-ID: <20010604171844.Z253@speedy.gsinet> In-Reply-To: <200106032255.f53MtaZ43691@jhs.muc.de>; from jhs@jhs.muc.de on Mon, Jun 04, 2001 at 12:55:36AM %2B0200 References: <noses@noses.com> <200106032255.f53MtaZ43691@jhs.muc.de>
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On Mon, Jun 04, 2001 at 00:55 +0200, Julian Stacey Jhs@jhs.muc.de wrote:
>
> noses@noses.com wrote to my:
> > > There are 2 German layouts
> >
> > One.
>
> Wrong ! Two at least since I've been working in Germany in various
> companies since 1985.
> Are you _In_ Germany to be authoratitive ?
> Your .com address might be anywhere, possibly USA ?
Well, while my address ends in .net I admit having been German
for the past thirty years. :) But at the same time I have to
admit that I stopped using the German layout some ten years ago
when I switched to US layout. Though that's completely a
different story and could easily cause religious wars to start if
handled in more details in public ...
The foremost question I have bubbling up is: How do you define
an official layout to be existent and different from another one?
What I'm trying to say is: I'm aware (FWIW) of only one German
keyboard layout. I never really thought that there were more
than one. Your referencing the .../syscons/keymaps/german* files
made me stop and wonder, while drawing a diff (plus kbdmap(5)
reading, some conversion fumbling and lookups) seem to reveal
that all the differences don't change anything important in the
keyboard layout but reflect screen representation issues between
the iso-8x16 and cp850-8x16 fonts only. The actual addition to
the german.iso seems to be the EUR currency sign and that you can
produce some ESC/CR/etc codes with the CTRL modifier.
Most variants you might refer to seem to come from PC (or general
computer?) specific features like
- 83/84(?) vs. 101/102 keys -- but this should only apply to
F-keys (don't know, haven't spent more than fifteen minutes in
total at an XT keyboard in my life :)
- 101 vs 102 keys -- this shouldn't be an issue since German
(international?) keyboard always have 102 keys
- swapped CAPS / CTRL keys -- but it's irrelevant for
alphanumeric and punctuation keys
- several methods of arranging the RHS keys between BS and ENTER
(most notably the backslash is either in the cipher row next to
BS or in the QWERT row at the edge below BS, but scancodes
don't vary AFAIK)
- I hop we don't talk about Laptop keyboards since the one I'm
currently at lacks some special keys usually found on a PC
keyboard and rearranges many of the remaining :-/
> > Anything else is non-standard.
>
> One might claim some are standards, & some are merely usages,
> but that would be unconvincing, merely degenerating to "What's
> a `Standard' ?"
We're talking about Germans here, right? Then it should be
rather easy to answer the "what's standard" question since there
should be some DIN ("Deutsches Institut fuer Normen")
description. You don't think Germans work in their offices with
something that's unspecified, do you? :>
Unless we consider all the layouts "in the wild" which is
something different. Lately I got a little nervous when I had to
learn that even the Dvorak layout has its variants.
> - X terminals at DASA(EADS) in Ottobrunn, Bavaria, Germany have 2
> German & 2 Swiss German keyboards.
While Swiss people might be German speaking, they're definitely
not representing Germany. :) So we can leave these layouts aside
as long as we are talking about German layouts.
But I'm still uncertain of what the second German layout could
be. The only thing I can come up with (after quite a long time
of thinking) would be the traditional - if not ancient - layout
typewriters used to have. But I've never seen them at computers.
The alpha part is still the same, while the shifted cipher row
(;"=%&()_?/:`) and the punctuation (,.- and ?!') look different
and some computer stuff (@\*~#) is missing or currency symbols /
merchant stuff (dollar, yen, pounds, number, etc) are locally
specific.
> - I append 4.1.1-RELEASE/usr/share/syscons/keymaps ; md5 *german*
> MD5 (german.cp850.kbd) = 828aab44f66193a74804d5a544d8fad0
> MD5 (german.iso.kbd) = 75fdc5acb2ec1f23f30eb63a3e387e26
> MD5 (swissgerman.cp850.kbd) = 7326888204968e60ca97c6416d738d34
> MD5 (swissgerman.iso.acc.kbd) = 271f51dbee352511290bbd4103e4e749
> MD5 (swissgerman.iso.kbd) = 6dbf00a423df479db7f5cc6d255edfd3
As stated above, "*german*" doesn't apply here and "german*" is
important only. Let me cite the diff:
--- german.cp850.kbd Thu Jan 25 22:09:09 2001
+++ german.iso.kbd Thu Jan 25 22:09:09 2001
@@ -1 +1 @@
-# $FreeBSD: src/share/syscons/keymaps/german.cp850.kbd,v 1.13.2.1 2000/07/18 00:47:52 ache Exp $
+# $FreeBSD: src/share/syscons/keymaps/german.iso.kbd,v 1.14.2.1 2000/07/18 00:47:52 ache Exp $
@@ -9,2 +9,2 @@
- 003 '2' '"' nul nul 253 253 nul nul O
- 004 '3' 245 nop nop 252 252 nop nop O
+ 003 '2' '"' nop nop 178 178 nop nop O
+ 004 '3' 167 nop nop 179 179 nop nop O
@@ -18 +18 @@
- 012 225 '?' fs fs '\' '\' fs fs O
+ 012 223 '?' fs fs '\' '\' fs fs O
@@ -24 +24 @@
- 018 'e' 'E' enq enq 'e' 'E' enq enq C
+ 018 'e' 'E' enq enq 164 'E' enq enq C
@@ -32 +32 @@
- 026 129 154 nop nop 129 154 nop nop C
+ 026 252 220 nop nop 252 220 esc nop C
@@ -45,3 +45,3 @@
- 039 148 153 nop nop 148 153 nop nop C
- 040 132 142 nop nop 132 142 nop nop C
- 041 '^' 248 rs rs '^' 248 rs rs O
+ 039 246 214 nop nop 246 214 nop nop C
+ 040 228 196 nop nop 228 196 nop nop C
+ 041 '^' 176 rs rs '^' 176 rs rs O
@@ -56 +56 @@
- 050 'm' 'M' cr cr 230 230 nop nop C
+ 050 'm' 'M' cr cr 181 181 cr cr C
@@ -89 +89 @@
- 083 del ',' '.' '.' '.' '.' boot boot N
+ 083 del '.' '.' '.' '.' '.' boot boot N
@@ -92 +92 @@
- 086 '<' '>' nop nop '|' '|' nop nop O
+ 086 '<' '>' nop nop '|' 166 nop nop O
Scancode 018 has the EUR sign, 050 is the Greek "mu"(sp?), and
everything else has the same sign but in different codepages.
I'm not too sure about the '.' sign in the keypad, since all the
German keyboards around have a comma there (I know this since
it's a real PITA to type IP numbers and programming language
fractionals).
> I've been in Germany 16 years, but I'm British, & avoid German
> keyboards where possible. If you'r German, Austrian or Swiss,
> & have worked on a wide variety of different German hardware,
> you might know more, but
> - It would help if you write from a .de address,
> quoting your international phone number starting +49, +41, or +43,
> & providing grammatical corrections to this sentence:
> "Es gibt mindestens Zwei verschiedener Deutsche Tastatur Belegungen,
> soweit ich verstehe."
That's not meant too seriously, but since you asked replying
subscribers to qualify as familiar with German: EMail addresses
may not say too much. Follow the instructions in my sig and
learn how to verify my fingerprint via a +49 phone number. And
"Meines Wissens gibt es mindestens zwei verschiedene deutsche
Tastatur-Belegungen" -- even if I don't know what the second one
looks like. :)
virtually yours 82D1 9B9C 01DC 4FB4 D7B4 61BE 3F49 4F77 72DE DA76
Gerhard Sittig true | mail -s "get gpg key" Gerhard.Sittig@gmx.net
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