Re: [Kmfl-user] Mnemonic Keyboards

[Richard W. <ric...@nt...>]

On Fri, 9 Dec 2016 09:54:16 -0800
Doug Rintoul <dou...@si...> wrote:

> The bug you are describing is definitely related to ibus rather than 
> kmfl specifically. Are you saying that purging libibus-1.0-0 fixed
> the problem for you? It is possible that libibus-1.0-0 had a bug that
> would not allow using the system keyboard for ibus keyboards. The
> weird thing is "Input Bus - rc  libibus-1.0-0: 1.4.1-3ubunt i386"
> indicates that libibus-1.0-0 was not installed on your system but
> there was still configuration files kicking around. That is what the
> "rc" indicates. Purging libibus-1.0-0 would delete those
> configuration files. So it may be that those files were interfering
> with libibus-1.0-5: 1.5.11 operation.

The purge seems to have restored some functionality, to what I had in
Ubuntu Precise.

The mnemonic keyboard I use is for entering IPA using XSAMPA keystrokes.
That uses backslash (\) to double up the number of characters, and I
extended the concept to add extra options ́(e.g tone accents v. tone
letters) by lettinɡ backslash cycle throuɡh a list of options, a trick
I copied from Martin Hosken).  Before the purge, I only had the
backslash in the US position.

Now, the keyboards I currently have enabled are, in order:

UK English (straight from XKB)
Thai (TIS 820.2538) (straight from XKB)
Khmer (straight from XKB)
US Enɡlish (straight from XKB)
Lanna Unicode (my own positional KMfL keyboard)
XSAMPA (my own menmonic KMfL keyboard)
Romaja (An M17n Korean keyboard)

After a while, switching to IBus keyboards does not work - I get only
the US keyboard.  I have to restart the daemon (ibus-daemon -rxd) even
though no daemons seem to have died.  I'm beginning to wonder if there
is some time-out on the switching ability.  This was the state of
affairs both before and after the purge.

Shortly after logging in or restarting the IBus daemon, starting or
switching to a new application makes XSAMPA keyboard the active
keyboard. The system keyboard, a plain XKB keyboard, is the first
keyboard in my list of keyboards.  If I wait long enough, this
behaviour seems to go away. The keyboard indicator shows that I am
using the plain XKB keyboard, but recently there has also been an
undocked keyboard indicator.  This undocked indicator started appearing
before the purge.

(Is there a shortcut to switch to the indicated keyboard?)

As I reviewed this reply, I observed that if I switched to the XSAMPA
keyboard by switching focus between applications, backslash is on the
‘international backslash’ key on the left.  However, if I switch using
the keyboard indicator or the ‘hot keys’, the backslash is positioned
according to the US keyboard, next to the return key.

Thus the fix is less complete than I had thought, but provides a useful
functionality for me, as I currently use only one mnemonic keyboard.

The general picture is that IBus is nowadays somewhat broken, but usable
by the patient.

So, how do physical and mnemonic KMfL keyboard mappings determine what
character or keystroke is to be fed into the KMfL engine defined by
the .kmn file?  My understanding is that the physical keyboard relies on
something close to the US keyboard being the XKB map at some stage, but
I am not sure what it is that selects a US keyboard map.  The KMfL
engine at least manages to identify the international backslash key in
physical keyboards - key stroke [K_oE2].

The old keyboarding system, as in Ubuntu Precise, allowed fine control.
One could chose an XKB mapping to correspond to the actual markings on
the keys for the peek and peck users, and then the IME could be chosen
to reinterpret the corresponding key strokes.  Thus, for my XSAMPA
keyboard, one could just remember a rule such as "'@' gives you 'ə'",
rather than having to remember "[shift K_2] gives you 'ə'".  (I have
both UK and Thai keyboards in the house, and the Thai keyboard is
engraved for a US layout.)

I have seen suggestions that users edit the user IBus reɡistry in
~/.cache/ibus/bus to select the underlyinɡ XKB keyboard.  However,
that has changed from a text to a binary file.

Richard.