The Linux Danish/International HOWTO Niels Kristian Bech Jensen, nkbj@image.dk v1.3, 31 May 1997 This document describes how to configure Linux and various Linux applications for Danish locale standards such as keyboard, font, paper-size etc. It is hoped that Linux users from other places in Western Europe will find this document useful too. 1. Introduction All European users of almost any operating system have two problems: The first is to tell the computer that you have a non-American keyboard, and the second is to get the computer to display the special characters. To make matters worse the applications themselves will also consider you an exception if you are not an American and require special options or the setting of environment variables. Under Linux you change the way your computer interprets the keyboard with the commands loadkeys and xmodmap. loadkeys will modify the keyboard for plain Linux while xmodmap makes the modifications necessary when the handshaking between X11 and Linux is imperfect. To display the characters you need to tell your applications that you use the ISO-8859-1 (a.k.a. Latin-1) international set of glyphs. This is not always necessary, but a number of key applications need special attention. This HOWTO is intended to tell Danish users how to do this. If you continue to have troubles after reading this you can try the German HOWTO, the Keystroke mini-HOWTO or the ISO 8859-1 FAQ. Many of the hints contained herein are cribbed from there. See section ``Other documents of relevance'' for pointers to these documents. You should also send me a mail describing your troubles. A final problem is that error-messages, menus and documentation of applications are always in English. There's a GNU project under way to address this problem. You can see what it's all about by downloading the file ABOUT-NLS or the package gettext-0.10.tar.gz (or any later version) from your favourite mirror of prep.ai.mit.edu. This project needs volunteers for the translations. Send a mail to da- request@li.org with the body ``subscribe'' if you want to contribute to the Danish part of the project. The documentation in the gettext package describes how to use such translations in your own programs. 2. Keyboard setup 2.1. Loading a keytable You have two tools for configuring your keyboard. Under plain Linux you have loadkeys and under X11 you have xmodmap. To try out loadkeys type one of these two commands: loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk.map loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map The difference between the two keymaps is that dk-latin1.map enables `dead' keys while dk.map doesn't. Dead keys are explained in section ``Dead keys and accented characters''. The program loadkeys and the keymaps are part of the package kbd-0.??.tar.gz which (with differing version numbers ??) is available with all Linux distributions. Usually loadkeys is executed at boot-time from one of the scripts under the directory /etc/rc.d/. Details vary between distributions. (Note for non-Danish readers: Support for other languages is enabled in a similar manner. Use es.map for Spanish keyboards etc.) X11 will normally follow the keymap used by plain Linux, but you can modify keyboard behavior under X11 with xmodmap. Usually the X11 initialization process will run this command automatically if you have a file called .Xmodmap in your home directory. 2.2. Getting the AltGr key to work under X11 For versions of XFree86 up to and including v3.1.2 you should edit the file /etc/X11/XF86Config (or possibly /etc/XF86Config) and make sure the line RightAlt ModeShift appears in the Keyboard section. Usually you can do this by uncomment­ ing the appropriate line. In XFree86 v3.1.2 you can use AltGr as an alias for RightAlt. In XFree86 v3.2 you should have the following Keyboard section in your /etc/XF86Config file (it is made automatically by the program XF86Setup if you choose a Danish keytable): Section "Keyboard" Protocol "Standard" XkbRules "xfree86" XkbModel "pc101" XkbLayout "dk" XkbVariant "nodeadkeys" EndSection The only available keyboard variant at the moment is ``nodeadkeys'', but the dead keys can still be made to work. See section ``Dead keys and accented characters'' for more information on this. 2.3. Dead keys and accented characters Dead keys are those which don't type anything until you hit another key. Tildes and umlauts are like this by default under plain Linux if you use the dk-latin1.map keymap. This is the default behaviour for these keys under Microsoft Windows as well. 2.3.1. Removing dead key functionality Under plain Linux type loadkeys dk.map 2.3.2. Invoking dead key functionality · Invoking dead key functionality under plain Linux Under plain Linux type loadkeys dk-latin1.map · Invoking dead key functionality under X11R6 sessions First you must make sure you are running XFree86 v3.1.2 or higher. Download and install everything related to the newest release if you have a lower version number. Neither compose nor dead keys won't work in X11R6 applications unless these are compiled with support for this input method. A useful example of such an application is GNU emacs version 19.30 (or higher). Next you'll have to map a key to Compose or (equivalently) Multi_key. The Scroll Lock key is most likely already mapped as such if you use XFree86 v3.1.2 (you can verify this with the program xev), and it is easy to map the right Control key by uncommenting the appropriate line in the Keyboard section of the XFree86 configuration file (often /etc/X11/XF86Config). If you wish to use some other key, or if you are using XFree86 v3.2 and want to change the default, you should put something like keycode 78 = Multi_key in your ~/.Xmodmap file. The default Compose key in XFree86 v3.2 is . XFree86 v3.2 comes without support for the dead keys on the standard Danish keyboard. You can get this support by adding the following lines to your ~/.Xmodmap file (or changing the lines if they are already there): keycode 21 = dead_acute dead_grave bar keycode 35 = dead_diaeresis dead_circumflex dead_tilde Finally make sure your shell and/or application is set up for ISO-8859-1 compatibility as described in section ``International character sets in specific applications'' and you should be all set. You can e.g. get ã by typing <~>. If dead keys work under plain Linux they should also work under X11 now. The available keystroke combinations are compiled in /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose. There are some bugs in this table you will want to fix: 1. The line reading : "~" tilde should be changed to : "~" asciitilde 2. In several places asciicircum is misspelled as asciicirum Some X applications does not support this general input method. Eventually this situation might improve, but until then you can either hack your applications or submit polite bug reports to their authors. The latter method is often the most efficient. See section ``Programming tips for X11'' for some advice on what needs to be done. 2.4. Making $ (the dollar sign), ø (oslash) and Ø (Oslash) work 2.4.1. $ (the dollar sign) There's a bug in the Danish keymaps causing the dollar sign to be accessed with <4> instead of <4> by default. If this is a problem for you, determine what keymap you load at boot-time. You can find it by looking around in the directory /etc/rc.d/ or simply by paying attention to what happens at boot-time. On my computer the relevant keymap is called /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map. You can fix the problem by changing the line keycode 5 = four dollar dollar in the keymap file to keycode 5 = four currency dollar and then loading the keytable as described in section ``Loading a keytable''. Currency (Dansk: ``soltegn'') is the default <4> character on a Danish keyboard. This fixes the problem for both X11 and plain Linux. 2.4.2. ø (oslash) and Ø (Oslash) On some older distributions ø and Ø appear as cent and yen. Find the line for keycode 40 in the keymap file and change it from keycode 40 = cent yen to keycode 40 = +oslash +Ooblique Note: This bug appears to have been fixed in kbd-0.88.tar.gz and newer versions. The plus signs are necessary to get Caps Lock working properly. Oslash can be used as an alias for Ooblique in kbd-0.90.tar.gz and newer versions. 3. Display and application setup Most applications need to be compiled as ``8-bit-clean'' to work well with European characters. Actually they often need a few extra hints to get it right. 3.1. Loading the Latin-1 character set on the console Execute the following commands under the bash shell: setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/lat1-16.psf mapscrn /usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/trivial echo -ne '\033(K' You could also choose to load a unicode font, which (in my opinion) is much nicer than lat1-16.psf and seems to be more stable: setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/iso01.f16 mapscrn /usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/iso01.uni echo -ne '\033(K' If you use Linux kernels v1.3.1 or higher, you don't need the mapscrn and echo statements when you use unicode fonts. Note: This only has effect under plain Linux. 3.2. Characters you can display under Linux Type dumpkeys -l | less at the prompt to find out which characters that are readily available. You can map them to your keyboard via the keymap files mentioned in section ``Loading a keytable''. 3.3. International character sets in specific applications A number of applications demand special attention. This section describes how to set up configuration files for them. bash : Put the following in your ~/.inputrc file: set meta-flag on set convert-meta off set output-meta on tcsh : Put the following in your /etc/csh.cshrc or ~/.tcshrc file: setenv LANG C Actually you just have to define one of the environment variables LANG or LC_CTYPE. The value doesn't matter. Read the tcsh man page for more information. ls : Issue the command as ls -N or possibly ls --8bit less : Set the following environment variable: LESSCHARSET=latin1 elm : Put the following definitions in your ~/.elm/elmrc file: charset = iso-8859-1 displaycharset = iso-8859-1 textencoding = 8bit This may not work on some versions of elm. pine : Put the following definition in your ~/.pinerc file: character-set=ISO-8859-1 This can also be set via the Setup option in pine. tin : Put the following definitions in your ~/.tin/headers file: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Now you can post messages with the proper Danish characters in the message body. lynx : Put the following definition in your ~/.lynxrc file: character_set=ISO Latin 1 This can also be set via the Options menu in lynx. Type `o' and set the relevant option. telnet : Put one line of the following type in your ~/.telnetrc file for each host you want to log on to using telnet: set outbinary true Example: localhost set outbinary true foo.bar.dk set outbinary true kermit : This is as close as I can get, but not completely satisfying yet. Put the following in your ~/.kermrc file: set terminal bytesize 8 set command bytesize 8 set file bytesize 8 set language danish set file character-set latin1-iso set transfer character-set latin1-iso set terminal character-set latin1-iso I think there are more variables to set, but they are hiding. You would have to modify these settings if the remote system is DOS or OS/2 based. emacs : Put the following in your ~/.emacs or the the system-wide initialization file (probably /usr/lib/emacs/site- lisp/default.el or /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/default.el): (standard-display-european t) (set-input-mode (car (current-input-mode)) (nth 1 (current-input-mode)) 0) Dead keys should work under GNU emacs provided you use GNU emacs v19.30 or higher and XFree86 v3.1.2 or higher (it works for me anyway), so don't start researching available elisp packages implementing ``electric keys'' or anything like that. If you want to implement European keyboard conventions in emacs without upgrading, the best choice is probably the remap package available from the SunSite DK server (see section ``FTP and Web sites''.) There are also two packages called iso-acc.elc and iso-trans.elc included with emacs that has similar functionality, but they are not nearly as powerful. ispell - Spell checking in Danish : First make sure that you install version 3.1 instead of version 4.0 of ispell. The latter is obsolete and multiple brain- damaged. You can download the sources for ispell at the GNU archive at prep.ai.mit.edu, and you can get a Danish dictionary via FTP from Aalborg University Center . Follow the compilation instructions and you should have no trouble (One caveat: When defining the variables necessary for compilation you must tell ispell that Linux is a Sys V type OS by defining the variable USG.) (Note for non-Danish readers: You can find dictionaries for most Western languages by reading the file Where included with the sources for ispell.) TeX/LaTeX : There are several problems with TeX/LaTeX: You want LaTeX to understand the special characters and you don't want LaTeX to put in English words like ``Chapter'' at the beginning of every chapter or use English typesetting conventions. Under LaTeX2e the header should look something like this: \documentclass[a4paper]{article} \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} \usepackage{t1enc} \usepackage[danish]{babel} The first usepackage statement ensures that LaTeX will interpret European characters correctly, so you don't have to use escape codes for European characters. The second isn't strictly necessary; but it is recommended to include it to use the new DC-fonts (which of course must be installed). These two packages are most likely included in your TeX distribution. The last usepackage statement defines a range of standards for use in Danish texts. If you use the Debian distribution (or older Slackware) you'll have to install Danish hyphenation tables yourself (Dansk: ``hyphenation''=``orddeling''). These are available from Aalborg University Center . The files you need are dkhyphen.tex, dkcommon.tex and dkspecial.tex. If you use the teTeX distribution (distributed with e.g. RedHat and S.u.S.E.) you already have the relevant files. Essentially you need to put these into the directory containing international hyphenation tables, edit the appropriate language dependency file (usually called language.dat) and finally rebuild LaTeX with initex. Before you do anything, please make sure you know what files you are changing and back them up in advance. If you use NTeX (distributed with the Slackware distribution) you will have a configuration script called ntm-ltx.cfg located in /usr/lib/texmf/tools/. In that case put the hyphenation tables in the the relevant directory (most likely called /usr/lib/texmf/tex/hyphenation/) and run the script. It will guide you through the various steps described below. If you use teTeX there's a somewhat more advanced program called texconfig to help you. Below is a description for enabling Danish hyphenation by hand. If it looks vague it's because TeX/LaTeX installations differ very much in their choice of path-names. 1. Find out where you have the hyphenation tables. Under NTeX they are in /usr/lib/texmf/tex/hyphenation/, under teTeX in /usr/lib/texmf/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/. Try issuing the command find /usr/lib/ -iname '*hyph*' -print if you can't find the directory. 2. Check if the hyphenation tables are already there. If not put the hyphenation tables mentioned above in this directory. 3. Edit the file (probably) called language.dat. In the teTeX distribution you can just uncomment the appropriate line. Otherwise insert a line reading danish dkhyphen.tex If you have difficulty finding language.dat try issuing the com­ mand find /usr/lib/ -name language.dat -print 4. Find and back up the file latex.fmt. It could be in a variety of places. Use find /usr/lib/ -name latex.fmt -print to find it. 5. Go to the directory where you found latex.fmt. Issue the command initex latex.ltx. Pray. If everything went well you now have a new version of latex.fmt. 6. You can now use \usepackage[danish]{babel} in your LaTeX headers. Hyphenation should be reasonably correct, quotation marks follow Danish conventions, chapters are now called ``Kapitel'' instead of ``Chapter'' etc. All new Linux distributions now includes LaTeX2e. (Note for non-Danish readers: The process is similar for other Western European languages, and the necessary files are normally included in the Linux distributions.) In LaTeX 2.09, use \documentstyle[a4,isolatin]{article} to include support for ISO-8859-1 characters and European paper sizes. isolatin.sty is available from all DANTE servers (see section ``FTP and Web sites'') and from Michael Gschwind's FTP site . It should also be included in the standard Linux distributions. Note: Some people prefer using emacs in a special mode which translates ``special'' letters into TeX escape codes, but this method should be obsolete by now. 4. Miscellaneous problems 4.1. Time zone Denmark is placed in the Central European Time zone (CET or MET), which (in the winter) is equivalent to Greenwich Middle Time plus 1 (GMT+1). You set the time zone on a Linux system by making a symbolic link between /usr/lib/zoneinfo/localtime and the file in /usr/lib/zoneinfo/ with a name corresponding to your zone or country. Danes will want to execute one of the commands ln -sf /usr/lib/zoneinfo/MET /etc/localtime or ln -sf /usr/lib/zoneinfo/Europe/Copenhagen /etc/localtime This automatically sets Daylight Saving Time (GMT+2) in the summer. You synchronize the system time with the CMOS clock by issuing the command clock. If your CMOS clock is set to Greenwich time (the standard on proper Unix systems) use clock -u -s or if your CMOS clock is set to local time use clock -s 4.2. A4 papersize · - in ghostscript: Add the command line option -sPAPERSIZE=a4. · - in ghostview: Define the following Xresource: Ghostview.pageMedia: A4 · - in dvips: Edit the file /usr/lib/texmf/dvips/config.ps or ~/.dvips. · - in xdvi: Define the Xresource XDvi.paper: a4 · - in TeX/LaTeX: See the entry for TeX/LaTeX in section ``International character sets in specific applications''. 4.3. Text file formats for other platforms You can translate files between an ISO-8859-1 formatted text file and e.g. a DOS text file using codepage 850 with the recode package. A DOS file called foo.txt would be translated into a proper Unix file with the command recode cp850:latin1 foo.txt recode is available as recode-3.4.tar.gz from all mirrors of prep.ai.mit.edu. 5. Programming tips for X11 Displaying 8-bit charaters is easy. You can use them just as you would use 7-bit ASCII. Getting applications to accept input of special characters is an entirely different matter. If you're using e.g. the Xt toolkit and a widget set like Motif you need only add one line to your program. As your first call to Xt use XtSetLanguageProc. Like this: int main (int argc, char** argv) { ... XtSetLanguageProc (NULL, NULL, NULL); top = XtAppInitialize ( ... ); ... } Now your program will automagically look up the LC_CTYPE variable and interpret dead keys etc. according to the Compose tables in /usr/lib/X11/locale/. This should work for all Western European key­ board layouts and is entirely portable. As XFree86 multilanguage sup­ port gets better your program will also be useful in Eastern Europe and the Middle East. This method of input is supported by Xt, Xlib and Motif v1.2 (and higher). According to the information I have available it is not supported by Xaw. If you have further information on this subject I'd like to hear from you. This section was adapted from a more extensive discussion in Michael Gschwind's FAQ on Programming for Internationalization. See section ``Other documents of relevance'' for pointers to the full document. 6. Getting X11 applications to speak Danish To get Danish texts on menus, buttons, etc. in a well behaved X11 application, you just have to translate the resource strings defining the texts. Jacob Nordfalk, nordfalk@cats.nbi.dk has done such translations for a lot of applications including Netscape and Ghostview. The translations and a description of how to install them can be found on his homepage . 7. References and FTP sites 7.1. Other documents of relevance The HOWTOs ought to be available from all mirrors of sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu. A Danish mirror at the Web is SunSite DK . The German HOWTO (in German) by Winfried Trümper. The Portugese HOWTO (in Portugese) by Joao Carlos Rodrigues Pereira. The Italian HOWTO (in Italian) by Marco ``Gaio'' Gaiarin. The Keystroke mini-HOWTO by Zenon Fortuna. The Locales mini-HOWTO by Peeter Joot. (This one is mainly for developers.) The ISO-8859-1 FAQ and Programming for Internationalization FAQ (plus much more) by Michael Gschwind is available from his homepage . 7.2. FTP and Web sites The Linux Danish/International HOWTO has its own homepage , which always has the latest version on- line. It also has other informations for Danish users of Linux. This FTP site at Aalborg University Center has Danish hyphenation tables, dictionary for ispell etc. AUC is also the home of SunSite DK which has the RedHat and Debian distributions, the latest kernels, the Linux Documentation Project , a mirror of sunsite.unc.edu and the remap package for emacs . DENet has mirrors of the Slackware distribution and the GNU archives . SunSite and mirrors. doc/howto has the above mentioned HOWTOs. utils/nls and subdirectories contain files related to National Language Support. Developers should take a look at locale-tutorial-0.8.txt.gz, locale-pack-0.8.tar.gz and cat- pack.tar.gz. The GNU archives has the recode package for character table conversion, the ABOUT-NLS file and the gettext package for locale support of some GNU applications and (of course) the latest versions of GNU emacs. The DANTE FTP site has everything needed for TeX and LaTeX support. 8. Post-amble: Acknowledgments and Copyright Thanks to Peter Dalgaard, Anders Majland, Jon Haugsand, Jacob Nordfalk, the authors of the German HOWTO, Michael Gschwind and numerous others for suggestions and help with several questions. And a big thanks to the people at Aalborg University Center for writing and making available several of the packages described in this document. This HOWTO is copyrighted by Thomas Petersen, petersen@post1.tele.dk (the original author) and Niels Kristian Bech Jensen, nkbj@image.dk. It is distributed as other Linux HOWTOs under the terms described below. Linux HOWTO documents may be reproduced and distributed in whole or in part, in any medium physical or electronic, as long as this copyright notice is retained on all copies. Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the authors would like to be notified of any such distributions. All translations, derivative works, or aggregate works incorporating any Linux HOWTO documents must be covered under this copyright notice. That is, you may not produce a derivative work from a HOWTO and impose additional restrictions on its distribution. Exceptions to these rules may be granted under certain conditions; please contact the Linux HOWTO coordinator at the address given below. If you have questions, please contact Greg Hankins, the Linux HOWTO coordinator, at gregh@sunsite.unc.edu via email.