Hello
I live in Norway. I'm going to build a new computer very soon, and I figured I could try out Norwegian Dvorak on it. But then I came across this website, and it seemed pretty interesting. I'm a Debian user. I use KDE 3.5.5 with kernel 2.6.18.3 and Xorg 7.1.1.
I'm wondering if there's a supported Norwegian keyboard layout using Colemak's principles for GNU/Linux.
I've got a picture of my keyboard here, in case some modifications to the layout need to be made.
(Yes, I realize that the keyboard is very dirty, but it's like four years old. Besides, I'm getting a new one for the new computer.)
http://xs411.xs.to/xs411/07020/dsc01795.jpg
For the record, the one I'm getting for the new computer is a Logitech Cordless Desktop EX110. Does Colemak support the multimedia keys?
Thanks :)
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Norwegian?
- Started by Dark Apostrophe
- 24 Replies:
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You're only half in luck, from what I know.
- The good news: I'm Norwegian, and so is "Padde". Heisann, og hjertelig velkommen hit! :)
- The bad: I use Windoze, and he's a Mac man. :(
- The ugly: TTBOMK, noone has made a Norwegian Colemak thingy for Linux yet, and I at least am stumped.
But keep your hat on. Maybe you are the one for the job? From the very little I know about this, it looks like it's only about editing some bits in a text file and then saying your right words. Shai's explained the installation of his own version here: https://colemak.com/Unix - have a peek and see what makes sense to you.
Me, I'd edit a copy of the standard Norwegian console file (???) you probably have in your system, changing the name to something uniquely identifiable. Move only the necessary letter keys around, keeping the Norwegian letters in place except the ø which jumps up one row.
Padde and I chose to leave all other punctuation be (only converting ShiftLock to Backspace, and in my case the right-hand Start to ShiftLock), although if you're typing lots of English your right pinky gets a bit annoyed with the stretch to the apostrophe and at your discretion you might want to map that to your old "æ" key (which is where most English layouts including Colemak has it). If you do that, I'd simply switch around æ and apostrophe even if Shai considers it somewhat poor form since you'll be confused while relearning your typing. The "ø" is not too uncommon but the "æ" doesn't see that much use in our language so it makes sense from an optimisation point of view.
Doing it in another way to avoid the confusing switcharound creates more problems than it solves as I see it. Sure, one could put the apostrophe on the old "p" and then ø on "æ" and æ on "apostrophe" but this looks unattractive unless you hardly write Norwegian. And if that's the case then I'd consider actually using Shai's standard install instead - you know that it has æøå on AltGr mappings, right?
There's also the idea of a stab at conformity to help out the next users that ask around for a Norwegian solution. If we Norskis can agree on one way it'd be nice I think. Only moving the "ø" is what Padde and I have done but we should be open to debate on the subject of course.
If the idea of doing this fills you with horror, maybe we can get someone else to do it. Hell, if you're interested (and scared) enough and nobody else volunteers for the job, I might just try to tackle the beast for you. But let's not hope it gets to that - for all I know you could be Mr. Torvalds' right hand man who eats stuff like this for breakfast with your mouth closed. :D
This method should fully support all kinds of keys on your keyboard, since it'd work on a virtual key mapping level. It'd just re-interpret the appropriate scancodes from the keyboard and system without messing with the others nor with any special command calls your keyboard may generate. There could in theory be applications that read scancodes more directly even if it's generally bad form these days, and then you'd have to intercept the key presses at a deeper level which is more of a hassle. But I haven't seen any warnings about this on the Unix/Linux install page at least, and that's a good sign.
(If a game for instance were to read, say, the WASD "left-hand arrow keys" block this way, that'd actually be a good thing for us since it'd then work as it should even if it'd now actually be a WARS block instead. How much cooler is controlling at least some types of games with your WARS keys than with your WASD keys, by the way?)
Yeah, I tend to make these long posts. Gotta practice my Colemak you know...
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So, if Mr. Torvalds' right hand man now creates this Linux design, then we actually have Norwegian Colemak layout for Mac, Win and Linux.
Maybe Shai should start to include international designs of Colemak, or we could create a Norwegian based website which I think you mentioned before DreymaR.
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I'm not that good... :P
Besides, Linus's right hand *men* (there are several of them) are Alan Cox, Andrew Morton, Greg Kroah-Hartman and a few others. :P
Anyway, I'm more of a GNU fan than a Linus & Co. fan.
I guess I could try to write a layout. I bought the parts today and I'll build the computer tomorrow. Once I get everything up and running, I'll try colemak.
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Good luck Apostrophe, and keep us posted!
Padde: I'm kinda hoping that Shai would let us have our own subforum here instead, to keep the family together. :) But even that probably won't be necessary, unless there's suddenly a whole Viking horde of us raving about in these parts.
*scratches head* How was it? First burn, then pillage? Nono, drink first, then burn the loot, then eat the women? Hmmm, that doesn't sound quite right either...
DreymaR and Viking friends, making horrible noises
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I'm going to try this tomorrow. For now, I'm just going to try and modify the colemak layout picture according to dreymar's instructions.
Edit: This is basically what you've done then (ignore the fact that the picture has qwerty):
http://xs311.xs.to/xs311/07030/dsc01795.jpg ?
Edit 2: Okay, the keyboard setups are very different, and the Norwegian keyboard seems to have more keys than the American one.
Shai, would you mind modifying your layout picture to fit with the norwegian keyboard?
Or someone else?
And I'm having trouble figuring out the config files...
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Good luck wrestling the config files! We're rooting for you.
Actually, my main suggestion would be to only move "Ø" up to the QWERTY "P" position, and leave both "Æ", the apostrophe and other punctuation as they were. In other words, move only those letters from B to Y that Shai moves, plus Ø. It won't be a problem, at least it hasn't been for me (and I haven't heard Padde complain either). This will keep track of the extra key on the 102-key board (which will still be <>), among other things.
If you can be bothered and feel a need for any of it, there are a few good ideas to implement while you're mucking about in the config files. My pet peeve is that the degree sign isn't on the Norwegian board - you might put that at AltGr+o for instance (I use that for the Greek letter o though). I also put the German β, Icelandic ðþ and Spanish ¡¿ as well as a lot of symbols like ∆•ª©®†≤≥ etc. on various AltGr combos. You never know when you might need them. Look at Shai's AltGr work - it's a source of good ideas although the standard Norwegian board already have the accented chars on dead keys.
I decided a while ago to make a picture, but I've been too lazybusy. Maybe I'll pull myself together soon.
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You could just photograph your keyboard.
But I type much more in English than I do in Norwegian, so I'd prefer the apostrophe to be closer.
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This is my keyboard, just so you understand why it won't help you:
https://www.netshop.no/img/cache/img_90 … _0_Big.jpg
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Oh shite...
Well, would you mind just editing the picture of my old keyboard with the new keys in red?
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I posted my Norwegian layout in this post: https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=52
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Ok, thanks.
(Damn, what a tiny image.. lol )
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I failed to figure out the config files. I asked a friend to have a look at them, but haven't spoken to him in days, I'm waiting for him to show up again...
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Neither my friend nor I managed to figure out the config files...
Shai, please make a norwegian version. Please.
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Shai doesn't have the time to cater for every little country that wants its own Colemak version. Understandable.
I will try to help. I take it that this is the version we're looking for since you use Xorg 7: https://colemak.com/Unix#X_Window_Syste … 0_or_later
I don't have time right now, but expect results (of some kind) within a day or two.
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Oh, ok. Thanks :D
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Hokay - I took a few hours yesterday to wrangle with this strange beast. Hope I produced something worthwhile. If you do as I do and call the file "ColemakNor", make sure to use that instead of "colemak" in Shai's instructions that I linked to above; and get the CamelCase right if you use capital letters in the name!
You saw the layout images I made in my other topic, I hope? The Norwegian ones could be useful to you in the starting phase.
My attempt isn't optimized when it comes to the AltGr functionality, but it should have the fun stuff that Shai put into his Xorg file at least. And I hope I got the "include" statement right. Try it out and see if it works - if not, we'll have some more wrangling to do. :)
// Colemak symbols for xkb on X.Org Server 7.x
// 2006-01-01 Shai Coleman, https://colemak.com/ . Public domain.
// 2007-02-08 Norwegian version by Øystein Bech Gadmar. Public domain.
partial default alphanumeric_keys
//xkb_symbols "basic" {
xkb_symbols "no" {
// include "us(basic)"
include "no(basic)"
name[Group1]= "ColemakNor";
// Alphanumeric section
key <TLDE> { [ bar, paragraph, brokenbar, section ] };
key <AE01> { [ 1, exclam, exclamdown, onesuperior ] };
key <AE02> { [ 2, quotedbl, at, twosuperior ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, numbersign, sterling, threesuperior ] };
key <AE04> { [ 4, currency, dollar, cent ] };
key <AE05> { [ 5, percent, EuroSign, yen ] };
key <AE06> { [ 6, ampersand, hstroke, Hstroke ] };
key <AE07> { [ 7, slash, braceleft, leftsinglequotemark ] };
key <AE08> { [ 8, parenleft, bracketleft, leftdoublequotemark ] };
key <AE09> { [ 9, parenright, bracketright, rightdoublequotemark ] };
key <AE10> { [ 0, equal, braceright, rightsinglequotemark ] };
key <AE11> { [ plus, question, questiondown, plusminus ] };
key <AE12> { [ backslash, dead_grave, dead_acute, division ] };
key <AD01> { [ q, Q, otilde, Otilde ] };
key <AD02> { [ w, W, masculine, ordfeminine ] };
key <AD03> { [ f, F, atilde, Atilde ] };
key <AD04> { [ p, P, copyright, registered ] };
key <AD05> { [ g, G, dead_ogonek, asciitilde ] };
key <AD06> { [ j, J, dstroke, Dstroke ] };
key <AD07> { [ l, L, lstroke, Lstroke ] };
key <AD08> { [ u, U, uacute, Uacute ] };
key <AD09> { [ y, Y, udiaeresis, Udiaeresis ] };
key <AD10> { [ oslash, Ooblique, odiaeresis, Odiaeresis ] };
key <AD11> { [ aring, Aring, degree, 0x1002039 ] };
key <AD12> { [ dead_diaeresis, dead_circumflex, dead_tilde, 0x100203a ] };
key <AC01> { [ a, A, aacute, Aacute ] };
key <AC02> { [ r, R, dead_grave, asciitilde ] };
key <AC03> { [ s, S, ssharp, asciitilde ] };
key <AC04> { [ t, T, dead_acute, dead_doubleacute ] };
key <AC05> { [ d, D, dead_diaeresis, asciitilde ] };
key <AC06> { [ h, H, dead_caron, asciitilde ] };
key <AC07> { [ n, N, ntilde, Ntilde ] };
key <AC08> { [ e, E, eacute, Eacute ] };
key <AC09> { [ i, I, iacute, Iacute ] };
key <AC10> { [ o, O, oacute, Oacute ] };
key <AC11> { [ ae, AE, adiaeresis, Adiaeresis ] };
key <BKSL> { [ apostrophe, asterisk, periodcentered, multiply ] };
key <AB01> { [ z, Z, dead_abovedot, asciitilde ] };
key <AB02> { [ x, X, dead_circumflex, asciitilde ] };
key <AB03> { [ c, C, ccedilla, Ccedilla ] };
key <AB04> { [ v, V, dead_cedilla, asciitilde ] };
key <AB05> { [ b, B, dead_breve, asciitilde ] };
key <AB06> { [ k, K, dead_abovering, asciitilde ] };
key <AB07> { [ m, M, dead_macron, mu ] };
key <AB08> { [ comma, semicolon, thorn, THORN ] };
key <AB09> { [ period, colon, eth, ETH ] };
key <AB10> { [ minus, underscore, endash, emdash ] };
key <CAPS> { [ BackSpace, BackSpace, Caps_Lock, Caps_Lock ] };
key <LSGT> { [ less, greater, guillemotleft, guillemotright ] };
key <SPCE> { [ space, space, nobreakspace, nobreakspace ] };
include "level3(ralt_switch)"
};[Edit 08.02.07: Fixed an error in the "include" statement, as discussed below]
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- 0
Thanks, I'll try it out in maybe half an hour or so. :D
Though it was really the console stuff that had me bothered, there is a GUI keyboard editor for Xorg. I guess I could stick to qwerty for the console.
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darkapostrophe@kobra:~$ setxkbmap -v ColemakNor && xset r 66
Warning! Multiple definitions of keyboard layout
Using command line, ignoring X server
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes: xfree86+aliases(qwerty)
types: complete
compat: complete
symbols: pc(pc105)+ColemakNor+inet(logiaccess)
geometry: pc(pc104)
Error loading new keyboard description
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1) Try actually describing your problem the next time. "The config files" apparently isn't very specific.
2) Looks to me like the "include" line got messed up. Try to include "no" only, and look in your Norwegian standard xkbmap file to see what it says in there. And ask an übergeek. I'm out.
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It works, thanks! But it feels so weird! It took me several minutes to write this :(
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Okay, glad to hear it's working. What did you do, exactly? Did you use the include "no" suggestion, or something else? Better get this fixed and ready for the next user that needs it.
Colemak seems to be gaining popularity in Norway already, unless it's just that the few Norwegians that use it all happen to be forum junkies...
Go Norway!
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include "no(basic)"
:)
And it's probably just forum junkies :)
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I fixed my post above so the script there should work now. Goody.
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Finally someone posted an answer to the problem of the misbehaving CapsLock key it seems:
https://forum.colemak.com/viewtopic.php?id=48
I was having problems in gnome, the capslock was working as a capslock AND a backspace. It anyone else is having this problem, heres the trick:
run this:
xmodmap -e "remove Lock = Caps_Lock"
that will only change the current session though, so make sure it works and put it in a startup script
He's using Gnome, but it looks like that might work for you too? If it does, yay!
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