nkbj@sslug.dk
All European users of almost any operating system have two problems: The first is to tell the computer that you have a non-American keyboard, and the second is to get the computer to display the special characters. To make matters worse some applications will also consider you an exception if you are not an American and require special options or the setting of environment variables.
Under Linux you change the way your computer interprets the
keyboard with the commands loadkeys and xmodmap. loadkeys
will modify the keyboard for plain Linux while xmodmap makes the
modifications necessary when the handshaking between X11 and Linux is
imperfect.
To display the characters you need to tell your applications that you use the ISO-8859-1 (a.k.a. Latin-1) international set of glyphs. This is not always necessary, but a number of key applications need special attention.
This HOWTO is intended to tell Danish users how to do this. If you continue to have problems after reading this you can try the German HOWTO, the Linux Keyboard and Console HOWTO or the ISO 8859-1 National Character Set FAQ. Many of the hints contained herein are cribbed from there. See section Other documents of relevance for pointers to these documents. You should also send me a mail describing your problems.
A final problem is that error-messages, menus and documentation of the
applications are mostly in English. There is a GNU project under way to
address this problem. You can see what it is all about by downloading
the file ABOUT-NLS or the package gettext-0.10.tar.gz (or any
later version) from your favourite mirror of the GNU archive. This
project needs volunteers for the translations. Send a mail to
da-request@li.org with the body ``subscribe'' if you want to contribute
to the Danish part of the project. The documentation in the gettext
package describes how to use such translations in your own programs.
You have two tools for configuring your keyboard. Under plain
Linux you have loadkeys and under X11 you have xmodmap.
To try out loadkeys type one of these two commands:
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk.mapor
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map
The difference between the two keymaps is that dk-latin1.map
enables `dead' keys while dk.map does not. Dead keys are explained
in section
Dead keys and accented characters. The
program loadkeys and the keymaps are part of the package
kbd-0.??.tar.gz which (with differing version numbers ??) is available
with all Linux distributions.
Usually loadkeys is executed at boot-time from one of the scripts
under the directory /etc/rc.d/. Details vary between distributions.
(Note for non-Danish readers: Support for other languages is enabled
in a similar manner. Use es.map for Spanish keyboards etc.)
Versions of XFree86 up to and including v3.1.2 will normally follow the
keymap used by plain Linux, but you can modify keyboard behavior under X11
with xmodmap. Usually the X11 initialization process will run this
command automatically if you have a file called .Xmodmap in your
home directory.
In XFree86 v3.2 and higher you should have the following Keyboard
section in your /etc/XF86Config (or /etc/X11/XF86Config) file
(it should be made automatically by the program XF86Setup if you choose
a Danish keytable):
Section "Keyboard" Protocol "Standard" XkbRules "xfree86" XkbModel "pc101" XkbLayout "dk" XkbVariant "nodeadkeys" EndSection
The only keyboard variant available at the moment is "nodeadkeys", but
dead keys can still be made to work. See section
Dead keys and accented characters for more information on this.
For versions of XFree86 up to and including v3.1.2 you should edit the file
/etc/XF86Config (or /etc/X11/XF86Config) and make sure the
line
RightAlt ModeShiftappears in the
Keyboard section. Usually you can do this by
uncommenting the appropriate line. In XFree86 v3.1.2 you can use
AltGr as an alias for RightAlt.
The AltGr key should work as expected in XFree86 v3.2 and higher if you
choose Danish keyboard support.
You can't input the characters ``{'' (<AltGr><7>),
``['' (<AltGr><8>), ``]''
(<AltGr><9>) and ``}'' (<AltGr><0>)
under the Metro-X server. This bug has been observed under versions 3.1.5
and 3.1.8 of the server.
To correct this bug you have to edit the file
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/dk and change the lines
key <AE07> { [ 7, slash ] };
key <AE08> { [ 8, parenleft ] };
key <AE09> { [ 9, parenright ] };
key <AE10> { [ 0, equal ] };
to
key <AE07> { [ 7, slash ],
[ braceleft, NoSymbol ] };
key <AE08> { [ 8, parenleft ],
[ bracketleft, NoSymbol ] };
key <AE09> { [ 9, parenright ],
[ bracketright, NoSymbol ] };
key <AE10> { [ 0, equal ],
[ braceright, NoSymbol ] };
Dead keys are those that do not type anything until you hit another
key. Tildes and umlauts are like this by default under plain Linux if
you use the dk-latin1.map keymap. This is the default
behaviour for these keys under Microsoft Windows as well.
loadkeys dk.map
Keyboard section of your
/etc/XF86Config (or /etc/X11/XF86Config) file:
XkbVariant "nodeadkeys"
loadkeys dk-latin1.map
GNU emacs version 19.30 (or higher.)
Some X11 applications still do not support this input method. Eventually
this situation might improve, but until that happens you can either hack your
applications or submit polite bug reports to the program authors. The latter
approach is often the most efficient. See section
Programming tips for X11 for some advice on what needs to be done.
Next you will have to map a key to Multi_key (Compose.) The
Scroll Lock key is most likely already mapped as such if you use
XFree86 v3.1.2 (you can verify this with the program xev,) and it is
easy to map the right Control key by uncommenting the appropriate line
in the Keyboard section of the XFree86 configuration file (often
/etc/XF86Config or /etc/X11/XF86Config.) If you wish to use
some other key, or if you are using XFree86 v3.2 or higher and want to change
the default, you should put something like
keycode 78 = Multi_keyin your
~/.Xmodmap file. The statement in the example defines
Scroll Lock as the Compose key. The default Compose key in
XFree86 v3.2 and higher is <Shift><AltGr>.
XFree86 v3.2 and higher comes without support for the dead keys on the standard
Danish keyboard. To get this support you have to change a few lines in the
xkb_symbols "basic" section of the file
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/dk. The lines
key <AE12> { [ acute, grave ],
[ bar, dead_ogonek ] };
key <AD12> { [ diaeresis, asciicircum ],
[ asciitilde, dead_macron ] };
should be changed to
key <AE12> { [ dead_acute, dead_grave ],
[ bar, dead_ogonek ] };
key <AD12> { [ dead_diaeresis, dead_circumflex ],
[ dead_tilde, dead_macron ] };
After these changes you can get support for dead keys by removing the line
XkbVariant "nodeadkeys"from the
Keyboard section of your /etc/XF86Config (or
/etc/X11/XF86Config) file.
(Note for non-Danish readers: There are files for many local keyboard maps in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols.)
The available keystroke combinations are listed in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose. There are some
bugs in that file you will want to fix:
<dead_tilde> <space> : "~" tildeshould be changed to
<dead_tilde> <space> : "~" asciitilde
asciicircum is misspelled as asciicirum
There is a bug in the Danish keymaps causing the dollar sign to be accessed
with <Shift><4> instead of <AltGr><4>
by default. If this is a problem for you, determine what keymap you load at
boot-time. You can find it by looking around in the directory
/etc/rc.d/ or simply by paying attention to what happens at boot-time.
On my computer the relevant keymap is called
/usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map. You can fix the problem by
changing the line
keycode 5 = four dollar dollarin the keymap file to
keycode 5 = four currency dollarand then (re-)loading the keytable as described in section Loading a keytable. Currency (dansk: ``soltegn'') is the default
<Shift><4> character on a Danish keyboard.
This should fix the problem for both X11 and plain Linux.
In some older distributions ``ø'' and ``Ø'' appear as cent and yen. Find the line for keycode 40 in the keymap file and change it from
keycode 40 = cent yento
keycode 40 = +oslash +Ooblique
This bug appears to have been fixed in kbd-0.88.tar.gz and newer versions.
The plus signs are necessary to get Caps Lock working properly. ``Oslash''
can be used as an alias for ``Ooblique'' in kbd-0.90.tar.gz and newer
versions.
You can read more about keyboard configuration at this site.
Most applications need to be compiled as ``8-bit-clean'' to work well with European characters. Some need a few extra hints to get it right.
Execute the following commands from your shell prompt:
setfont lat1u-16.psf
In Red Hat Linux 5.2 and higher you can do this by adding these lines to
/etc/sysconfig/i18n:
SYSFONT=lat1u-16.psf SYSTERM=linuxDue to a bug in the
ncurses package on Red Hat Linux 5.2, you also
have to change ``linux-lat'' to ``linux'' in /etc/profile.d/lang.sh.
This is not necessary in Red Hat Linux 6.0.
A new symbol has been added to the Danish character set: The symbol for the Euro (the new currency of the European Monetary Union.) A new character set called ISO-8859-15 a.k.a. latin0 (or latin9) has been created to replace ISO-8859-1 (latin1.) You must use the EURO package to get support for latin0. The package includes both fonts and keymaps.
Type dumpkeys -l | less at the prompt to find out which characters
that are readily available. You can map them to your keyboard via the keymap
files mentioned in section
Loading a keytable.
A number of applications demand special attention. This section describes how to set up configuration files for them.
bash:
Put the following in your ~/.inputrc file:
set meta-flag on set convert-meta off set output-meta on
elm:
Put the following definitions in your ~/.elm/elmrc file:
charset = iso-8859-1 displaycharset = iso-8859-1 textencoding = 8bit
This may not work on some versions of elm. You can get partial MIME
support in elm if you use metamail.
emacs:
Put the following in your ~/.emacs or the the system-wide
initialization file (probably /usr/lib/emacs/site-lisp/default.el or
/usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/default.el):
(standard-display-european t)
(set-input-mode (car (current-input-mode))
(nth 1 (current-input-mode))
0)
Dead keys should work under GNU emacs provided you use GNU emacs v19.30 or
higher and XFree86 v3.1.2 or higher (it works for me anyway,) so do not start
researching available elisp packages implementing ``electric keys'' or
anything like that. If you want to implement European keyboard conventions
in emacs without upgrading, the best choice is probably the remap
package available from
SunSite DK.
There are also two packages called iso-acc.elc and iso-trans.elc
included with emacs that have similar functionality, but they are not nearly
as powerful.
groff:Issue the command as
groff -Tlatin1 <your_groff_input_file>if you want ISO-8859-1 text output.
Remember to change this in /etc/man.config to get latin1 characters
working in man (don't remove the -mandoc switch.)
ispell --- Spell checking in Danish:
First make sure that you install version 3.1.20 instead of version 4.0 of
ispell. The latter is obsolete and multiple brain-damaged. You can
download the sources for ispell at
the GNU archive
and you can get a Danish dictionary from
SSLUG. Follow
the compilation instructions and you should have no trouble (One caveat: When
defining the variables necessary for compilation you must tell ispell that
Linux is a SysV type OS by defining the variable USG.)
When you have installed the Danish dictionary for ispell you can check
the spelling of a Danish language file by executing the command:
ispell -d danish -T latin1 -w "æøåÆØÅ" <your_danish_text_file>
(Note for non-Danish readers: You can find dictionaries for most Western
languages by reading the file Where included with the sources for
ispell.)
joe:Issue the command as
joe -asisor put the following in your
~/.joerc file:
-asis
The hyphen character must be in the first column.
kermit:
This is as close as I can get, but not completely satisfying yet. Put the
following in your ~/.kermrc file:
set terminal bytesize 8 set command bytesize 8 set file bytesize 8 set language danish set file character-set latin1-iso set transfer character-set latin1-iso set terminal character-set latin1-iso
I think there are more variables to set, but they are hiding. You would have to modify these settings if the remote system is DOS or OS/2 based.
less:Set the following environment variable:
LESSCHARSET=latin1This is not necessary if your system support locales. Then you should just set
LANG, LC_CTYPE or LC_ALL (see section
Locale support in libc 5.4.x and higher.)
ls:Issue the command as
ls -Nor possibly
ls --8bit
lynx:
Put the following definition in your ~/.lynxrc file:
character_set=ISO Latin 1
This can also be set via the Options menu in lynx. Type `o' and set
the relevant option.
man:
See entry for groff in this section.
metamail:Set the following environment variable:
MM_CHARSET=ISO-8859-1
nn:
Put the following in your ~/.nn/init file:
set data-bits 8
pine:
Put the following definition in your ~/.pinerc file:
character-set=ISO-8859-1
This can also be set via the Setup, Config menu option in pine.
It won't hurt to enable enable-8bit-esmtp-negotiation and
enable-8bit-nntp-posting (for news) in that menu too.
rlogin:Issue the command as
rlogin -8 foo.bar.dk
sendmail:
Put (or uncomment) the following in your /etc/sendmail.cf file:
O SevenBitInput=False O EightBitMode=pass8 O DefaultCharSet=iso-8859-1
tcsh:
Put the following in your /etc/csh.login or ~/.tcshrc
file:
setenv LANG C
Actually you just have to define one of the environment variables LANG
or LC_CTYPE. The value does not matter. Read the tcsh man
page for more information.
telnet:
Put one line of the following type in your ~/.telnetrc file for
each host you want to log on to using telnet:
<hostname> set outbinary true
Example:
localhost set outbinary true foo.bar.dk set outbinary true
There are several problems with TeX/LaTeX: You want LaTeX to understand the special characters and you do not want LaTeX to put in English words like ``Chapter'' at the beginning of every chapter or use English typesetting conventions.
Under LaTeX2e the header of your input file should look something like this:
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{t1enc}
\usepackage[danish]{babel}
The first usepackage statement ensures that LaTeX will interpret
European characters correctly, so you do not have to use escape codes for
European characters. The second one is not strictly necessary, but it is
recommended including it to use the new EC fonts (previously called DC
fonts.) The third usepackage statement defines a range of standards
for typesetting texts in Danish.
All the major Linux distributions now includes the teTeX package. To
set up teTeX you must run the script texconfig. Here you can choose
Danish hyphenation (dansk: ``orddeling''), A4 papersize for dvips and
xdvi etc.
All new Linux distributions include LaTeX2e, but on older systems you might come across LaTeX 2.09. If that happens you can use
\documentstyle[a4,isolatin]{article}
to include support for ISO-8859-1 characters and European paper sizes. A
better thing to do would be to ask your system administrator to upgrade
to LaTeX2e.
isolatin.sty is available from all
CTAN servers.
Some people prefer to use emacs in a special mode which translates ``special'' letters into TeX escape codes, but this method is obsolete.
tin:
Put the following definitions in your ~/.tin/headers file:
Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Now you can post messages with the proper Danish characters in the message body.
Denmark is placed in the Central European Time zone (CET or MET,) which (in
the winter) is equivalent to Greenwich Mean Time plus 1 (GMT+1.) You set
the time zone on a Linux system by making a symbolic link between
/usr/lib/zoneinfo/localtime and the file in
/usr/lib/zoneinfo/ with a name corresponding to your zone or
country. Danes will want to execute one of the commands
ln -sf /usr/lib/zoneinfo/MET /etc/localtimeor
ln -sf /usr/lib/zoneinfo/Europe/Copenhagen /etc/localtime
This automatically sets Daylight Saving Time (GMT+2) in the summer.
You synchronize the system time with the CMOS clock by issuing the command
clock as root. If your CMOS clock is set to GMT (a.k.a. UTC --- the
standard on proper Unix systems) use
clock -u -sor if your CMOS clock is set to local time use
clock -s
ghostscript:
Add the command line option -sPAPERSIZE=a4.
ghostview: Define the following Xresource:
Ghostview.pageMedia: A4
TeX/LaTeX, dvips, xdvi: See the entry for
TeX/LaTeX in section
International character sets in specific applications.
You can translate files between an ISO-8859-1 formatted text file and
e.g. a DOS text file using codepage 850 with the recode package. A
DOS file called foo.txt would be translated into a proper Unix
file with the command
recode cp850:latin1 foo.txt
recode is available as recode-3.4.tar.gz from all mirrors of
the GNU archive.
The locale support has been updated in libc 5.4.x. You can avoid many of
the individual program setups described in section
International character sets in specific applications if the programs
on your system is prepared for locale support. The Debian distribution comes
with this support if you install the wg15-locale package. Systems with
GNU libc 2 (libc 6.x) support locales by default (see remarks about
Red Hat Linux release 5.0 later in this section.)
If you use a system without locale support, you can add such support using the following method:
libc 5.4.x library. You can get this
from
Yggdrasil Computing.localedef program installed. It should come
with the library./usr/share/i18n/locales/ and the
charmap sources in /usr/share/i18n/charmaps/.localedef program to build the locale data files:
localedef -ci da_DK -f ISO_8859-1:1987 da_DK(Note for non-Danish readers: You can build locale data files for other locales in the same way. All locale and charmap sources are at the DKUUG site.)
To enable support for the Danish locale on a system with locale support you just have to set one of the following environment variables:
LANG=da_DKor
LC_ALL=da_DK
Try da_DK.ISO_8859-1 if da_DK does not work.
Both environment variables set all the individual locale catgories. You can also set a single locale category by using the name of the category as an environment variable. The locale catogories are:
Locale category Application
--------------- -----------
LC_COLLATE Collation of strings (sort order.)
LC_CTYPE Classification and conversion of characters.
LC_MESSAGES Translations of yes and no.
LC_MONETARY Format of monetary values.
LC_NUMERIC Format of non-monetary numeric values.
LC_TIME Date and time formats.
LC_ALL Sets all of the above (overrides all of them.)
LANG Sets all the categories, but can be overridden
by the individual locale categories.
In Red Hat Linux 5.2 you can set the environment variables LANG and/or
LC_ALL in the file /etc/sysconfig/i18n by adding lines such as
this:
LC_ALL=da_DK
A few programs such as bash and GNU emacs still need specific
setup as described in section
International character sets in specific applications, but most
should work without further attention. Programs such as nvi which
did not work with 8 bit characters before should work now.
Locale support should be more common as distributions based on the new
GNU libc 2 become available. Beware that although Red Hat Linux release
5.0 comes with GNU libc 2, the locale support is not working. You have to
build the locale data files by executing localedef yourself. You can build
the Danish locale data files with the following command:
localedef -c -i da_DK -f ISO-8859-1 da_DK
As of glibc-2.0.7-4.i386.rpm the locale data files are included with the
libraries and this is no longer necessary.
Displaying 8-bit charaters is easy. You can use them just as you would use 7-bit ASCII. Getting applications to accept input of special characters is an entirely different matter.
If you are using e.g. the Xt toolkit and a widget set like Motif you need
only add one line to your program. As your first call to Xt use
XtSetLanguageProc. Like this:
int main (int argc, char** argv)
{
...
XtSetLanguageProc (NULL, NULL, NULL);
top = XtAppInitialize ( ... );
...
}
Now your program will automagically look up the LC_CTYPE variable
and interpret dead keys etc. according to the Compose tables in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/. This should work for all Western European
keyboard layouts and is entirely portable. As XFree86 multilanguage support
gets better your program will also be useful in Eastern Europe and the
Middle East.
This method of input is supported by Xt, Xlib and Motif v1.2 (and higher.) According to the information I have available it is only partially supported by Xaw. If you have further information on this subject I would like to hear from you.
This section was adapted from a more extensive discussion in Michael Gschwind's Programming for Internationalization. See section Other documents of relevance for a pointer to that document.
To get Danish texts on menus, buttons, etc. in a well behaved X11 application,
you just have to translate the resource strings defining the texts. Jacob
Nordfalk has done such translations for a lot of applications including
Netscape and Ghostview. The translations and a description of how to
install them can be found at
this site.
The HOWTOs are available from all mirrors of www.linuxdoc.org. There is a
Danish mirror at
SunSite DK.
The German HOWTO (in German) by Winfried Trümper. A lot of other national HOWTOs such as Finnish, Spanish and Polish are also available in the native languages.
The Linux Keyboard and Console HOWTO by Andries Brouwer.
The ISO 8859-1 National Character Set FAQ and Programming for Internationalization (plus much more) by Michael Gschwind is available from this site.
SSLUG (Skåne Sjælland Linux User Group) is a Swedish/Danish Linux user group. Their mailing list is a good place to get help with Linux in Danish (or Swedish.) They are also hosts for this document.
AUC in Ålborg is the home of SunSite DK which has the Debian and Red Hat distributions, the latest kernels, a mirror of the Linux Documentation Project and mirrors of metalab.unc.edu and the GNU archive. There is also a mirror of the CTAN archive with everything you need to get TeX and LaTeX running.
Thanks to Peter Dalgaard, Anders Majland, Jon Haugsand, Jacob Nordfalk, the authors of the German HOWTO, Michael Gschwind and numerous others for suggestions and help with several questions. And a big thanks to the people at Aalborg University Center for writing and making available several of the packages described in this document. A special Thank You to Thomas Petersen; the original author of this document.
Trademarks are owned by their owners.
Although the information given in this document is believed to be correct, the author will accept no liability for the content of this document. Use the tips and examples given herein at your own risk.
Copyright © 1996 by Thomas Petersen. Copyright © 1997-2000 by Niels Kristian Bech Jensen. This document may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the LDP license at http://www.linuxdoc.org/COPYRIGHT.html.