Japanese Keyboard Not Mapped Correctly

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Angus77
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed 05 Sep 2007, 12:57
Location: Japan

Japanese Keyboard Not Mapped Correctly

#1 Post by Angus77 »

I'm really glad I found Puppy Linux! I have an ancient AMD 500MHz PC with 128MB of memory at work that I'm thrilled to get a gui Linux working on.

The problem is, I'm living in Japan, and both my work computer and my computer at home have Japanese keyboards, but the ja keyboard mapping isn't entirely correct.

All the keys seem to be mapped correctly after I choose the ja keyboard except one: the key three keys to the right of the letter L (which is in the same place as a US L). It should be a right square brace, and a right curly brace when shifted.

Instead, it is "\", and "|" when shifted. Both these characters also come up on the kerys where I would normally expect them.

I'm trying to teach myself some programming. Try to write a C or Java program without closing braces!

Does anyone know how I could get this fixed? (Or fix it myself?)

Angus77
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed 05 Sep 2007, 12:57
Location: Japan

#2 Post by Angus77 »

This is pretty serious for me! Is there really nobody who can help?

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#3 Post by muggins »

i've seen your post but never answered, as i really don't have a clue, as i've never had to use anything but qwerty. have you looked at this?

http://www.win.tue.nl/~aeb/linux/kbd/scancodes.html

particularly section 8. also puppy has the command:

Code: Select all

setkeycodes
BusyBox v1.01 (2006.08.20-09:28+0000) multi-call binary

Usage: setkeycodes SCANCODE KEYCODE ...

Set entries into the kernel's scancode-to-keycode map,
allowing unusual keyboards to generate usable keycodes.

SCANCODE may be either xx or e0xx (hexadecimal),
and KEYCODE is given in decimal
but whether that's the easiest solution in your case i don't know. have you thought of posting a query to a japanese puppy forum?

http://sakurapup.browserloadofcoolness.com/

Angus77
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed 05 Sep 2007, 12:57
Location: Japan

#4 Post by Angus77 »

Thanks for the reply!

I actually came across setkeycodes in a search while trying to solve this. Nothing changed.

I just downloaded & burned a copy of Sakura, and it's the same thing. This really bugs me. It does this on both my home and work computers. And yet there seems to be a whole community of Sakura users who don't have this problem.

Chalk it up to gremlins who want to keep me Puppy-free?

I haven't had this problem with any other distro I've tried, though (Damn Small, Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, Freespire)...

The Japanese-style keyboard is mostly the same as a regular qwerty keyboard--the alphanumeric keys are the same. Just a few of the characters are on different keys than you'd be used to: @ is to the left of p, double quotes are shift-2, etc. And all the parentheses and brackets happen to be just one key away from where you'd expect.

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#5 Post by muggins »

i'm sure that there exists a quite simple solution to your problem, but unfortunately i'm not aware what that is. (why those in the "know" treat earnest queries like your's with disdain is another question...something to do with ego i suspect).

anyway, i was wondering if, given that the keyboard works fine with other distros, it would be possible to compare the keyboard .map file of a working distro, with puppy's, and maybe replace puppy's with the working one, (after backing up the original).

the keyboard .map files are stored in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386. (surely it couldn't be that simple?)

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#6 Post by muggins »

also, as a temporary solution, i wonder how easy it would be to re-assign keys. i haven't tried any of these but wonder if they have any possible utility for your problem?

http://shallowsky.com/software/crikey/

http://wmalms.tripod.com/#XHKEYS

or xbindkeys, which is available as a .pup

and this thread might shed some light on the usage of setkeycodes:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 05&t=14871

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#7 Post by muggins »

also i wonder if dougal's Xkb utility could be of any use:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 80&t=13292

and g2 has a virtual keyboard .pup, which has the option of a japanese keyboard, here:

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 180&t=4554

(i'm clutching at straws here, waiting for the keyboard cavalry to turn up! one person i'm sure would know the answer is gn2)

Angus77
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed 05 Sep 2007, 12:57
Location: Japan

#8 Post by Angus77 »

I didn't think I was being disdained--I figured nobody knew. How many English speakers use Japanese keyboards?

Interestingly, I found this in/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/jp106.map for keycode 43 (or 0x2b):

Code: Select all

keycode  43 = bracketright     braceright
	control	keycode  43 = Control_bracketright
which is exactly what it should be. Why on earth would the output be different?

I tried switching the keyboard to us (I've had to put up with a us layout on a Japanese keyboard before--confusing, but I figured I could at least find a right brace somewhere!). For some reason, even though the us layout is selected (and explicitly loads up when I reboot), I still get the same broken Japanese layout for output.

I tried comparing the .map file with the one I have in Ubuntu--to the letter, they're exactly the same! Right down to the date they were created.

muggins:I'll try other ideas next time when I'm not so sleepy (2 in the morning right now, and I gotta get up at 7!)

Angus77
Posts: 6
Joined: Wed 05 Sep 2007, 12:57
Location: Japan

Fluxbuntu, too!

#9 Post by Angus77 »

It looks like Fluxbuntu has the exact same problem.

b_linux
Posts: 11
Joined: Wed 15 Aug 2007, 01:15

My Japanese Keyboard(laptop) Works fine with Puppy 2.17

#10 Post by b_linux »

Angus77,

Sorry to hear about your problems. Are these the characters you are having trouble with?

]
and
}

?

They have mapped perfectly for my Japanese Sharp laptop. Have you tried using a different keyboard? My laptop keyboard is slightly different from a full size keyboard. If you are still trying to solve this problem, I can run Puppy on my desktop - with its full size keyboard - to see if I have your problem.

On another note, have you been able to configure Japanese input yet?

Good luck!

muggins
Posts: 6724
Joined: Fri 20 Jan 2006, 10:44
Location: hobart

#11 Post by muggins »

Angus77,

I don't know if you ever resolved this keyboard problem, or whether you're still a kennel dweller, but i just noticed this file on puppy's ibiblio site:

http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/dis ... er-1.1.pet

It's only 22kbytes, so it might be worth a look to see if it's any help.

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