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Author Topic: ckbcomp ?  (Read 5218 times)

Offline bernhard

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ckbcomp ?
« on: May 23, 2011, 08:05:11 AM »
I am trying to use an international keyboard layout with grub-2 (available since 1.99, see http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2011-04/msg00149.html). This requires the command ckbcomp to compile the X11 keyboard layout definition files to a format, which is understood by the console tools. I was neither able to locate that command nor the kbd definitio files in TinyCore. I found them to be available in grml (http://grml.org) or other debian derivates.

Is there an alternative way for TinyCore which could translate the kmaps format (apparently used by BusyBox/TinyCore) to the same output as ckbcomp? The console format is used only as an intermediate representation for piping it into yet another conversion program for a grub specific version (does anybody know if this is yet another reinvention of some wheel?).

I was able to find out that ckbcomp is contained in the Debian packages console-setup and console-setup-mini ...

regards
     Bernhard

Offline curaga

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Re: ckbcomp ?
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2011, 08:15:17 AM »
The man page says "ckbcomp - compile a XKB keyboard description to a console font.", or that it converts an X keymap to a console one (loadkeys format).
Since the busybox kmaps are essentially the loadkeys format in a more compact form, yes, it should be possible to convert from them to whatever grub uses.

Though there's a whole lot of wheels here from a quick look ;) why even use the X keymaps, when there's a ton of them for the console? [retoric question]
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline bernhard

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Re: ckbcomp ?
« Reply #2 on: June 10, 2011, 09:27:04 AM »
... Since the busybox kmaps are essentially the loadkeys format in a more compact
form, yes, it should be possible to convert from them to whatever grub uses.
Which is the easiest way to convert busybox kmaps to the format required
by grub-mklayout?

Most probably, the required format is the one defined in keymaps(5)?

regards
    Bernhard

Offline curaga

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Re: ckbcomp ?
« Reply #3 on: June 10, 2011, 10:11:48 AM »
Why not just use the originals in that format, from the kbd tarball?
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.

Offline bernhard

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Re: ckbcomp ?
« Reply #4 on: June 11, 2011, 09:04:28 AM »
Why not just use the originals in that format, from the kbd tarball?
Is this ftp://ftp.altlinux.com/pub/people/legion/kbd/kbd-1.15.2.tar.gz the rigth one?

Offline curaga

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Re: ckbcomp ?
« Reply #5 on: June 11, 2011, 10:20:27 AM »
Yeah, it's the same. The source on one of our mirrors would be at
ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/metalab/distributions/tinycorelinux/3.x/tcz/src/kmaps/
The only barriers that can stop you are the ones you create yourself.