Typing With Ten Fingers
Many people happen to use only something like six fingers for typing. Using the
others is astonishingly easy. See the Ten Finger
Page.
The keyboard is the most important input device, and I have spent quite some
time to set up my X11 keyboard layout. I prefer the QWERTY layout because it
makes programming a lot easier over the QWERTZ layout that is common in
Germany. I've put the German umlauts (ÄäÖöÜüß) on the combinations AltGr-A,
AltGr-a, and so on. Unfortunately, every vendor uses his own keycodes, so
there are different files for different architectures.
The files are loaded with 'xmodmap .xmodmap-name'.
- .xmodmap-pc: PC layout
Of course, the Control key is in the rightTM place, replacing
CapsLock (which noone need anyways). There are several other new keys, e.g.,
the dead_anything keys for typing all those funny characters.
The meta keys are available on the HHKB (see below).
- .xmodmap-sun: Sun (Type 4/5) layout
A light version for Sun keyboards. The arrow keys on the number pad are
redefined (Left instead of KP_Left) to make Netscape recognize them on Sun
Type 4 keyboards.
- .xmodmap-ncd: NCD (N97) layout
I sometimes use NCD X terminals, this is a small modmap for these.
Detecting the Keyboad Type
There is no straightforward way to detect the type of keyboard that is
connected to the X server. I've written a small program to check the
X server vendor string to decide whethere a PC, sun, or NCD keyboard is
used. Of course, this is not infallible, but at least it's a starting
point. (If you have a better idea, please let me know.)
Put one of the following lines into your .xsession (or .xinitrc) to use the
program:
- xkbd load
- XKBD=`xkbd` && xmodmap .xmodmap-$XKBD
- . xkbd && xmodmap .xmodmap-$XKBD
Happy Hacking Keyboard (HHKB)
The HHKB is a very small keyboard by
PFU.
Some time ago, I wrote a keyboard layout description for
xkeycaps.
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