Looking into the symbol files

In the previous post, we talked about the ANTLR grammar that parses the XKB layout files.

The grammar is available at http://code.google.com/p/keyboardlayouteditor/source/browse. I’ll rather push to the freedesktop repository once the project is completed. Now it’s too easy for me, just doing svn commit -m something.

Below you can see the relevant layout files for each country (and in some cases, language), and how the grammar deals with them. First column is filenames from the CVS XKB symbols subdirectory (to be moved eminently to GIT). Last’s week discussion with Sergey helped me figure out issues with the symbol files, simplify what information is needed, and what can be eliminated. Second column has Not OK if something is wrong. Third column tries to explain what was wrong.

ad
af
al
altwin
am
ara
az
ba
bd
be
bg
br
braille
bt
by
ca
capslock
cd
ch
cn
compose
ctrl
cz
de
dk
ee
epo
es
et
eurosign
fi
fo
fr
gb NOK Non-UTF8
ge
gh
gn
gr
group NOK virtualMods= AltGr
hr
hu NOK Non-UTF8
ie
il NOK key.type=”FOUR_LEVEL” (typically: key.type[something]=….)
in NOK key.type=”FOUR_LEVEL” (typically: key.type[something]=….)
inet
iq
ir
is
it
jp NOK key <BKSP> {
type=””,   // empty?
symbols[Group1]= [ bracketright, braceright ]
};
keypad NOK overlay1=<KO7> }; // what’s “overlay”?
kg
kh
kpdl
kr
kz
la
latam
latin
level3 NOK virtual_modifiers LAlt, AlGr; virtualMods= Lalt
level5
lk
lt
lv
ma
mao
me
mk
mm
mn
mt
mv
nbsp NOK Non-UTF8
ng
nl
no
np
olpc
pc NOK key <AA00> { type=”SOMETHING” } instead of { type[Group1]=”SOMETHING” }
pk
pl
pt
ro
rs
ru
se
shift NOK actions [Group1] = [
si
sk
srvr_ctrl NOK key <AA00> { type=”SOMETHING” } instead of { type[Group1]=”SOMETHING” }
sy
th
tj
tr
ua

Non-UTF-8 are the files that have characters that are not UTF-8 (are iso-8859-1).

Some layouts have key.type = “something” and others key.type[SomeGroup] = “something”. Apparently, the format allows to infer which is the group that the type acts upon? That’s weird. Would it be better to put the group information? Is it required that the group is not set?

Some files have virtualMods, which I do not know what it is. Is it used?

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.simos.info/looking-into-the-symbol-files/

3 comments

    • svu on May 29, 2008 at 07:43
    • Reply

    Non-UTF8 – I’ll fix it.

    Yes, virtual modifiers are essential.

    I’ll check about the key.type.

  1. I assume the problem with the GB file is simply the £ (erm, my version is UTF-8) in a comment.
    Do you need help to fix it beyond that?

  2. @John: Indeed, it’s the £ sign. Sergey will be fixing these minor issues.

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