greek writing language and keybindings

greek writing language and keybindings

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

Hello list,

it's the first time I'm using emacs to write greek text, so I just noticed 
that I have to switch languages for keybindings to work! That is for 
everything, even things that are used all the time, like C-a, M-q, C-n etc

Any ideas on how to fix this?


Thanks in advance,
Dimitris

P.S. Please CC replies to me

Re: greek writing language and keybindings

[ken]

On 10/28/2010 08:00 PM Dimitrios Apostolou wrote:
> Hello list,
> 
> it's the first time I'm using emacs to write greek text, so I just
> noticed that I have to switch languages for keybindings to work! That is
> for everything, even things that are used all the time, like C-a, M-q,
> C-n etc
> 
> Any ideas on how to fix this?
> 
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Dimitris
> 
> P.S. Please CC replies to me

Though I'm not the list's expert, I have dabbled in some languages with
emacs.  From what I've found, there's two steps.  One is to set the
buffer's language environment.  UTF-8 works for many different
languages, Greek included.  Select UTF-8 for the current buffer by
clicking on "Options", "MULE", and "Set Language Environment", then "URF-8".

Next, in order to be able to type in Greek characters, you need to set
the input method.  Do this for the current buffer by clicking on
"Options", "MULE", and "Select Input Method".  In the minibuffer type
"gr", then hit Tab (C-i) and you'll see several Greek input methods.
You'll have to play around with these to find the one(s) you prefer.

After you find what works for you, then of course you can put something
in your ~/.emacs, but I don't know what that would be.

hth,
ken

Re: greek writing language and keybindings

[Dimitrios Apostolou]

Hi, thanks for your reply

I should note that I am already writing greek perfectly in emacs, and I am 
switching languages using the X server shortcut I have chosen for every X 
application with the following command, and I wouldn't like to change 
that:

setxkbmap us,el -option "grp:shifts_toggle"

The problem is that I have to switch back to english for the default 
keybindings to work, which is very irritating!

On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, ken wrote:
> Though I'm not the list's expert, I have dabbled in some languages with
> emacs.  From what I've found, there's two steps.  One is to set the
> buffer's language environment.  UTF-8 works for many different
> languages, Greek included.  Select UTF-8 for the current buffer by
> clicking on "Options", "MULE", and "Set Language Environment", then "URF-8".

I am using emacs 23 and there is a little "U" at the lower left corner of 
the emacs window, doesn't that mean that UTF-8 is selected by default?

>
> Next, in order to be able to type in Greek characters, you need to set
> the input method.  Do this for the current buffer by clicking on
> "Options", "MULE", and "Select Input Method".  In the minibuffer type
> "gr", then hit Tab (C-i) and you'll see several Greek input methods.
> You'll have to play around with these to find the one(s) you prefer.

Thanks for the suggestion, I tried that and indeed emacs keybindings work 
fine like that. But that requires switching languages within emacs with 
C-\, overriding the setxkbmap command. Is there a better way?


Thanks, Dimitris


P.S. On a sidenote, maybe this is related to my emacs being compiled with 
GTK+ disabled and Motif toolkit enabled? Can someone with a GTK+ enabled 
emacs test whether keybindings work, when a non-latin language is enabled?


>
> After you find what works for you, then of course you can put something
> in your ~/.emacs, but I don't know what that would be.
>
> hth,
> ken
>

Re: greek writing language and keybindings

[B. T. Raven]

Dimitrios Apostolou wrote:
> Hi, thanks for your reply
> 
> I should note that I am already writing greek perfectly in emacs, and I
> am switching languages using the X server shortcut I have chosen for
> every X application with the following command, and I wouldn't like to
> change that:
> 
> setxkbmap us,el -option "grp:shifts_toggle"
> 
> The problem is that I have to switch back to english for the default
> keybindings to work, which is very irritating!
> 
> On Thu, 28 Oct 2010, ken wrote:
>> Though I'm not the list's expert, I have dabbled in some languages with
>> emacs.  From what I've found, there's two steps.  One is to set the
>> buffer's language environment.  UTF-8 works for many different
>> languages, Greek included.  Select UTF-8 for the current buffer by
>> clicking on "Options", "MULE", and "Set Language Environment", then
>> "URF-8".
> 
> I am using emacs 23 and there is a little "U" at the lower left corner
> of the emacs window, doesn't that mean that UTF-8 is selected by default?
> 
>>
>> Next, in order to be able to type in Greek characters, you need to set
>> the input method.  Do this for the current buffer by clicking on
>> "Options", "MULE", and "Select Input Method".  In the minibuffer type
>> "gr", then hit Tab (C-i) and you'll see several Greek input methods.
>> You'll have to play around with these to find the one(s) you prefer.
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion, I tried that and indeed emacs keybindings
> work fine like that. But that requires switching languages within emacs
> with C-\, overriding the setxkbmap command. Is there a better way?

It seems that that IS the better way. And much more elegant. Why burden
the OS with something Emacs can handle?

If you are using only two imput methods in a document then C-\ will
toggle between them. If you want more then you could change imput
methods quickly in many different ways. From my .emacs (using version
22; there are probably better ways in vers. 23 since it is unicode based):

(fset 'im-lat1
   [?\C-x return ?\C-\\ ?l ?a ?t ?i ?n ?- ?1 ?- ?p ?o ?s ?t ?f ?i ?x
return])
(fset 'im-gkb
   [?\C-x return ?\C-\\ ?g ?r ?e ?e ?k ?- ?b ?a ?b ?e ?l return])
(fset 'im-lat4
   [?\C-x return ?\C-\\ ?l ?a ?t ?i ?n ?- ?4 ?- ?p ?o ?s ?t ?f ?i ?x
return])
(fset 'im-uc
   [?\C-x return ?\C-\\ ?r ?f ?c ?1 ?3 ?4 ?5 return])
(fset 'im-heb
   [?\C-x return ?\C-\\ ?h ?e ?b ?r ?e ?w return])
(fset 'im-hbb
   [?\C-x return ?\C-\\ ?h ?e ?b ?l ?i ?s ?h return])

Then M-x im-gkb sets method to greek-babel, giving you most of the
diacritics for polytonic Greek. I think this will work on w32 and Linux.

> 
> 
> Thanks, Dimitris
> 
> 
> P.S. On a sidenote, maybe this is related to my emacs being compiled
> with GTK+ disabled and Motif toolkit enabled? Can someone with a GTK+
> enabled emacs test whether keybindings work, when a non-latin language
> is enabled?

I think Pascal has answered this. If you want to use Greek in apps
outside of Emacs, isn't there a way of simply switching keyboards on the
fly? If you forget to change it back before returning to Emacs isn't
there a function that could be hooked to make sure it is a system
keyboard appropriate for Emacs?

> 
> 
>>
>> After you find what works for you, then of course you can put something
>> in your ~/.emacs, but I don't know what that would be.
>>
>> hth,
>> ken
>>
> 

Re: greek writing language and keybindings

[Ilya Zakharevich]

On 2010-11-03, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
> On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:59:32 +0300 (EEST), Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis@gmx.net> wrote:
>>> Next, in order to be able to type in Greek characters, you need to set
>>> the input method.  Do this for the current buffer by clicking on
>>> "Options", "MULE", and "Select Input Method".  In the minibuffer type
>>> "gr", then hit Tab (C-i) and you'll see several Greek input methods.
>>> You'll have to play around with these to find the one(s) you prefer.
>>
>> Thanks for the suggestion, I tried that and indeed emacs keybindings
>> work fine like that. But that requires switching languages within emacs
>> with C-\, overriding the setxkbmap command. Is there a better way?
>
> Unfortunately no.  The current XKB input method changes what Emacs sees
> as a keypress when you switch languages through XKB.  So you have to
> stick to C-\ and `M-x set-input-method' or keep switching back to XKB
> English before you use an Emacs command.

So what?  When a key-map gets an unknown key, cannot it call a
user-defined function to translate stuff using a special
translation-map?  Essentially, this would mean installing a special
translation-map for duration of key-sequences...

Ilya

Re: greek writing language and keybindings

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 22:35:15 +0000 (UTC), Ilya Zakharevich <nospam-abuse@ilyaz.org> wrote:
> On 2010-11-03, Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr> wrote:
>> On Fri, 29 Oct 2010 05:59:32 +0300 (EEST), Dimitrios Apostolou <jimis@gmx.net> wrote:
>>>> Next, in order to be able to type in Greek characters, you need to set
>>>> the input method.  Do this for the current buffer by clicking on
>>>> "Options", "MULE", and "Select Input Method".  In the minibuffer type
>>>> "gr", then hit Tab (C-i) and you'll see several Greek input methods.
>>>> You'll have to play around with these to find the one(s) you prefer.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the suggestion, I tried that and indeed emacs keybindings
>>> work fine like that. But that requires switching languages within emacs
>>> with C-\, overriding the setxkbmap command. Is there a better way?
>>
>> Unfortunately no.  The current XKB input method changes what Emacs sees
>> as a keypress when you switch languages through XKB.  So you have to
>> stick to C-\ and `M-x set-input-method' or keep switching back to XKB
>> English before you use an Emacs command.
>
> So what?  When a key-map gets an unknown key, cannot it call a
> user-defined function to translate stuff using a special
> translation-map?  Essentially, this would mean installing a special
> translation-map for duration of key-sequences...

Maybe.  This sounds like a useful idea...

I feel rather satisfied with the internal Emacs C-\ input selection, and
I've even patched Emacs 23.X to support Greek style «quotes», so there
is little incentive for me to patch that.

I'll gladly review any patches you write for this sort of thing :-)