unable to type <, > and | while using Finnish layout on a 101-key keyboard

Hi toni-ruottu,

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with the latest development release of Ubuntu? (ISOs are available from cdimage.ubuntu.com)

If it remains an issue, could you also attach a new /var/log/Xorg.0.log?
Thanks in advance.

The output of lspci -vvnn would also be worth having.

Is this some sort of a trick question? My bug report is about a problem in the keymap. It has nothing to do with pci bus or Xorg failures.

It's the default copy-paste to X-related bug reports which have no attachments.

The problem might be in the X / GNOME keyboard settings. As of 8.10, no xorg.conf is needed anymore, and the default auto-detection should theoretically work. The keyboard settings come now from /etc/default/console-setup (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IntrepidReleaseNotes/fi#X.Org-sy%C3%B6telaitteet).

So the system has been quite revamped for 8.10 release, which might be enough to resolve the problem (if just willing to upgrade to 8.10).

It is not a detection problem. The 101-key keyboards don't have the button which is mapped to <, > and |. So in order to fix this, the Finnish keymaps need to be extended with a secondary way of typing <, >, |. When the preferred key is missing.

Tony, what's your proposal? We could try putting these keys on 3rd level, if you like. But if we do it in Finnish layout, it will also affect people with larger kbds.

Another question - if you chose US layout, do you have normal access to these characters? Why not add US as a second layout - and use, for example, group:rctrl_switch option?

PS Honestly, never realized there are still 101-keys around;)

What does "3rd level" refer to? I think the change should affect users with larger kbds as well, because this would make it easier to learn about these alternative ways of writing those characters.

Rctrl_switching is a good duct tape fix, but Ubuntu ought to have something that worked without tweaking.

I wonder, if any other layout suffers from the same problem.

Forwarded this up to the xkeyboard-config bug tracker in case it's more convenient for svu to track it there. Toni, please subscribe to this bug report: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20300

"3rd shift level" is usually accessed by presing RAlt (2nd level is accessed with any Shift). If you think that putting extra mappings to 3rd level is ok (people won't complain), we can do that.

I used to map
AltGr+z to <,
AltGr+x to >, and
AltGr+§ to |
(§ refers to the key above tabulator, one step left from key "1", below Esc)

This mapping worked ok for me while I was using a "Happy Hacking" keyboard (a stripped down 101-key kbd).
Yet, there are some things to consider:

- AltGr+z and AltGr+x are currently in use. They map to ʒ and ×. I just trashed those because I didn't need them that often. Maybe someone needs them? Could they be moved?
- in any case < and > are needed quite often, so mapping them in some really awkward place is not a good idea either
- it would be good for this redundant mapping to be in place even when it is not needed. This helps the users find it and try it out while they are lucky enough to not need it.
- It would further help users to find the feature, if the functions from the potentially missing key would be mapped in a similar manner between different layouts. Are AltGr+z and AltGr+x equally available for this use on all 102-key layouts?
- Is the key that produces § available on most obscure keyboards. I doubt anyone would want to add separate fixes
  for yet another obscure keyboard, so this fix might as well map it to something that is very likely to be around.
- My choice of key § is completely arbitrary. Is there a combination for | that would be easier to guess? Maybe AltGr+L (with a lowercase L) would be good? Would that be available for this use on all 102-key kbd layouts?
- Is the problem only about people not being able to produce characters that get mapped to the missing key? Maybe someone needs support for actually producing the key code for that button (this might ofcourse be another bug)

Of course, technically everything can be moved. But in reality it would lead to some number of irritated users. I would do everything to avoid that. Could you please use some available AltGr combinations? Actually, in the default variant fi(kotoistus) there are very few empty spaces (NoSymbol), almost all of them on level 4 (AltGr-Shift):

AltGr-1, AltGr-Shift-~, AltGr-Shift-7, AltGr-Shift-8, AltGr-Shift-9, AltGr-Shift-e, AltGr-Shift-i, AltGr-Shift-s, AltGr-Shift-k, AltGr-Shift-l.

Feel free to choose. All other symbols, as I understand, are specified in kotoistus, so we cannot move them without breaking compatibility.

Yes, your changes will be available to 102-key configurations.

In that case I'd go for:

AltGr-Shift-8 to <,
AltGr-Shift-9 to >, and
AltGr-Shift-i to |

Just noticed the missing key has ¦ as well. So let's go for:

AltGr-Shift-8 to <
AltGr-Shift-9 to >
AltGr-Shift-i to |
AltGr-Shift-l to ¦

key 8 has currently characters ( and [
key 9 has currently characters ) and ]
so, if you think of < and > as they are used in xml tags they have a similar opening (<) and closing (>) association.

with | and ¦ it would be a good to choose a key that has something similar in it. Key 1 is too far away to be reached conveniently. We also need two combinations as they are two different characters. so let's use l and i.

One may wonder why I chose l for ¦ and i for |. Indeed l looks more like | and i looks more ¦. And that is my reason. You want to be able to tell the characters apart. l and | look too much in common. It can cause errors. Also | is needed more often and you'd normally press i with a stronger finger than l.

The current layout is from Research Institute for the Languages of Finland, approved last year by Finnish Standards Association SFS and is available at http://www.kotoistus.fi/nappaimisto.htm. More Linux-specific information at http://kotoistus.tksoft.com/linux/index-en.html. Indeed any mapping specified there should not be changed. 8, 9, l and i look like currently being available (1 is mapped to ¡).

I think this is acceptable.

Fixed upstream

Discussions in Freedesktop.org bug thread resulted in a decision to leave redundant mapping for broken bar out, as it is unclear, if broken bar should indeed have a direct mapping at all. It might be that broken bar will in future be supported only through character composing features involving the right side "Windows key".

Now that we got it fixed upstream.
How long will it take for the fix to get into Ubuntu?
Is it going to be in Jaunty? Karmic? Next LTS maybe?

Oh, and the new map can be found at
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/tree/symbols/fi

(just in case I wasn't the only one looking for it)

I think this is how the process goes:

 1 Changes go into freedesktop.org git repository (that already happened)
 2 A release happens at http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config
 3 Debian packages the new release
 4 The new Debian package gets pulled into Ubuntu

I guess there is no way all this could happen before Jaunty gets released,
but I hope it can be done in time for Karmic. Are xkeyboard-config releases
synchronized with xorg releases, or are they free to happen at any time?

xk-c is released on 4-monthly basis. Next release is in May

> I guess there is no way all this could happen before Jaunty gets released,

Ha, like ninjas in the night we are, picking the cherries...

Thanks, patch queued up for jaunty.

This bug was fixed in the package xkeyboard-config - 1.5-2ubuntu8

---------------
xkeyboard-config (1.5-2ubuntu8) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Update 106_ru_fix_shift.patch: Remove extraneous parts to only
    change the minus/underscore issue. Upstream.
    (LP: #309844)
  * Add 109_de_low_quotemarks.patch: Add keys for typing low quotation
    marks. Upstream.
    (LP: #59572)
  * Add 110_fi_brokenbar.patch: Add keys for bar and broken bar symbols in
    the finnish keymap. Upstream.
    (LP: #181595)
  * Add 111_si_rm_unnecessary_diagraph_layouts.patch
    and 112_si_rm_unnecessary_diagraph_layouts_basexmlin.patch:
    Remove unnecessary diagraph layouts. Upstream.
    (LP: #162462)
  * Add 113_kg_fix_kyrgyz_layouts.patch: Update to official Kyrgyz
    Republic layouts. Upstream.
    (LP: #198655)

 -- Bryce Harrington <email address hidden> Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:02:42 -0700

Thank you. I'm very happy about getting the mapping for Jaunty.

I took a look on the mapping file. It seems that Jaunty will have the broken bar mapping (AltGr+Shift+l). This mapping was decided to be removed in a further update to the xorg key map file, but I guess that won't be a problem. Iirc broken bar did not exist at all in the original Kotoistus mapping and is not needed that often, so reserving another key combination for it would have been waste. Thus AltGr+Shift+l is unmapped in the current edition. This will only be a problem, if some users start to use the combination before moving Karmic which will obviously have the later version which removes this feature. I think that is not too likely to happen.