[dwm] key bindings / french layout

On Fri, Oct 05, 2007 at 11:38:53PM +0200, Anselm R. Garbe wrote:
> Well the only reason I don't like with all those solutions are
> the different keyboard layouts out there. Especially qwerty and
> zxcvb are not ideal, because they differ in nearly all non-US layouts.
>

Just fyi, the current bindings don't even work with this stupid azerty
(french) layout :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Azerty_fr.svg

The numbers are not directly available, only via Shift.
Several applications are not usable at all (like dwm), because you simply
can't use the bindings using numbers, even when pressing shift.
Some others application are difficult to use, because you have to press shift
all the time.

Initially, I just made the following replacement in config.h (I saw a while
ago on this list that other azerty users had to do the same) :
XK_0 XK_agrave
XK_1 XK_ampersand
XK_2 XK_eacute
XK_3 XK_quotedbl
XK_4 XK_apostrophe
XK_5 XK_parenleft
XK_6 XK_minus
XK_7 XK_egrave
XK_8 XK_underscore
XK_9 XK_ccedilla

But recently, I decided to try switching to qwerty, instead of having to
customize the bindings of each application. And I've been using it since
then.
There are some not cool drawbacks though :
1) writing french (which requires accent) is more difficult
2) I regularly have to switch back to azerty on other box, and I still have
some difficulties when switching, I often mix both :)
3) it also makes my box unusable to others, mostly family :p using a layout
not matching the real keyboard is confusing.
Received on Sat Oct 06 2007 - 00:31:01 UTC