International support

Hi,

I'm considering buying a Linpus version of Aspire One and wonder whether it has support for russian and hebrew languages. Can some happy owner of Aspire One check this for me please? (i googled a lot but couldn't find this info)

Appreciate your help.
Alex

 

I will check for you today at lunch time. (30mins from now.)
Check back later in the day.

 

Russian is available as one of the Keyboard input languages by default.
I don't remember if it is one of the languages that you can setup so Linpus menus will in in that language or not.
As for Hebrew, there some KDE packages, and m17n-db files, which I think are input files, because someone was asking about Vietnamese input, and saying something about m17n-db files..

So at the very least you should be able to type in Russian or Hebrew.

 

When you receive your AA1, maybe you receive it in English. You just reinstall the OS from a USB drive and select the language you want. At least, for Spanish, everything is properly set, from the names of the programs, to OpenOffice set up with a Spanish dictionary and Spanish spell checking, to the keyboard. I ASSUME that they probably did the same for other languages.

 

I just got the Aspire One (Linpus) and after declaring English my default language installed Russian easily... The keyboard was available in Settings, Input Languages. Except the keyboard map is the "phonetic" keyboard (e.g. Russian "A" is on the "A" key). But the "real" Russian keyboard (the default on all computers in Russia) is radically different. For example, Russian "A" should be where the English "F" key is.

So... is there a way to remap a given language keyboard's letter layout? (cf. Windows MSKLC keyboard layout editor.)

Or alternatively, is there a source to download and a way to install a standard Russian keyboard?

Thanks in advance! -RR

 

I just got the Aspire One.

So... is there a way to remap a given language keyboard's letter layout? (cf. Windows MSKLC keyboard layout editor.)

I believe I have solved my own problem. Foreign language keyboard maps on the Aspire One are stored in mnd/home/.scrim/user-tables/. Right-click on the Aspire One opening screen and launch File Manager. If you are a newbie to Linux, as I am, it helps to know two additional things: (1) on the Acer One “mnd/home/” (View as Advanced Mode) is the same as “My Disk:///” (View as Simple Mode); (2) in File Manager turn on View Hidden Files, or else no filename/folder name beginning with “.” shows up.

In the folder .scim folder (explained above), look for language.bin, where “language” is the name of the language whose keyboard map you want to edit. To be safe, back up everything. So to edit russian.bin, I did this:

1. Move (not copy - more on this in a bit) russian.bin to the Documents folder.

2. Copy russian.bin to russian.bin.old.

3. Open russian.bin in the Mousepad editor. The file has two important parts.

VALID_INPUT_CHARS =

The equals sign is followed by all the letters that you want to remap. If, for example “@” is not to be remapped, don’t include it in this line.

Then further down, we find

BEGIN_TABLE

That’s where the remapping starts. It consists of a series of lines with the format:
English original character (tab) New foreign character (tab) 0

For example, Russian A is remapped to F as
F A 0

The last line in the file is
END_TABLE

Hint: make sure you keep the file for old table in a safe place, since if you forget letters, you might have to copy-paste from the old table!

4. When done, save the file as language.bin (in this case russian.bin).

5. Copy the newly edited file back to mnd/home/.scrim/user-tables/. (Remember that mnd/home/ is the same as My Disk:///)

6. Reboot. Your new keyboard mapping is ready to use.

Important: don’t leave two copies of the same language in the .scim directory, even if they have different filenames. The SCIM input engine won’t realize that there are two keyboard maps of the same language. It will arbitrarily(?) pick the wrong table. (I’m sure that more experienced users know how to edit the non-table part of the file so that SCIM see two keyboard layouts for the same and allows you to pick which one you want. My that’s beyond my three-day-old knowledge of SCIM and linpus.)

-RR

 

In a previous post I described how to edit SCIM international keyboards. But I am now convinced that SCIM is superfluous. Apparently Linpus/Fedora has its own robust keyboard input routine. (Why run two?)

I now use what is apparently the native IME method. It's controlled by the blue language square in the status bar at the bottom right of the screen. For me, the default is EN.

Right-click on the blue square and you can add and delete languages. Switch languages by left-clicking on the square, or as in Windows, press Shift-Alt to toggle.

Now, here are my questions:

1. If I switch to RU (Russian) or HE (Hebrew), or whatever, what is the location of the keyboard map file that determines the keyboard layout? I would like to edit it.

2. Can the language toggle key (default=Shift-Alt) be altered? (I prefer Shift-Ctrl.)

Any help would be appreciated.