[vox-tech] Keyboard switching with xkb

[Mark K. Kim]

On Fri, Oct 26, 2007 at 02:46:18PM -0500, Ken Bloom wrote:
> On Fri, 26 Oct 2007 12:20:28 -0700 Bill Kendrick <nbs at sonic.net> wrote:
[snip]
> > After all this nifty digging, you wouldn't happen to want to look into
> > making sure users can type Hebrew into Tux Paint for me, would you? :)
> > (It may Just Work(tm), but I know nothing about Hebrew input methods.)
[snip]
> Well, Hebrew doesn't use an input method, since it has a small 22
> letter alphabet.

This is true from what little I understand about Hebrew.  So input
method isn't strictly necessary, provided SDL will let you switch to
Hebrew mode by passing off the keyboard inputs to X Window (or Windows
or Mac, etc.)  It is, however, possible to implement a keyboard mapping
in Tux Paint anyway to make it work on US keyboards under OS that has
not been configured to input Hebrew.  How appropriate that is depends on
the language and the culture...

> I did notice that TuxPaint (1:0.9.17-1) doesn't have bidirectional text
> support, so entering Hebrew will be in the wrong direction.

I never looked into it too deeply but I think Tux Paint does support
right-to-left but last time it anchored the text box on the left side
instead of on the right side even in right-to-left mode.

> After that,
> you'll want to find out about how vowels are placed properly, but last
> I checked, the only people who have managed to do that properly were
> the writers of dvips.

I'm not familiar enough with Hebrew but it might be possible to fake
that with the IM engine.  But, again, I'm not familiar enough with
Hebrew to know for sure whether it can or not.  I guess you could say
"Your cubitage may vary?" =P

-Mark