Re: [be] multiple font support for notes

[Jonathan Marsden]

On 03/22/2011 10:13 PM, Brian Wilson wrote:

> Thank you very much. I have my homework cut out and will work on this
> now...

Grin! Yes, working on bugs and issues in open source software really can
be *work*, but you often learn a lot by doing so. I know I have, over
the years, and I continue to do so.

> By "programs" I mean, 3 text editors, 3 word processors, 4 browsers,
> Indesign, mindmap, terminal, evernote.

OK.  I strongly suspect that all of those are native OS X programs of
one kind or another.

It might be helpful if you could try out a few other well known programs
that use macports; if it turns out that all macports programs have the
same issue (they are oblivious to software-selected keyboard mapping
changes), and all non-macports programs handle keyboard mapping changes
perfectly, then we have a fairly obvious direction to start looking in
for the cause of the issue :)

Can you please try out abiword and bluefish and gedit, all of which are
apparently available, according to the list of editors at

  http://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=category&substr=editors

and report how each of them handles the multiple keyboard layouts you
are using?

My reasons for choosing these three are that:

 * all are pretty well known in the Unix/Linux world,
 * all are tools for editing textual material (so in some sense they are
similar to bibledit, and also so that typing stuff and seeing the
results on screen should be straightforward in each of them)
 * all of them have Windows ports too, so we can check their behaviour
in all three OS environments later, if that becomes necessary.

> Well, I see now that gnucash on my mac does not like Thai. Unable to
> enter Thai in gnucash, but haven't looked at the settings.

OK.  Is your installed copy of GNUcash macports-based?

> I change keyboards on my mac by either using the keyboard
> combination "shift - spacebar" or by clicking on the keyboard icon at
> the top of the page.

OK.  That's pretty OSX-specific, and I can see how Bibledit may simply
take "Shift - spacebar" as being exactly that, one more keystroke, and
not actually change keyboard mappings when it is pressed.  It all
depends on how low a level the keyboard routines that bibledit
eventually calls (via a layer or two of portability libraries, I expect)
work at.

> I have Thai, Lao and Greek keyboard's installed on the mac,

Just to be clear: these are software-defined keyboard layouts, right?
Not different physical keyboards, with different layouts and keytops,
each needing to be physically plugged in to the machine?  It is probably
possible to plug three separate different physical keyboards into a Mac
at once, but I doubt it is very common :)

Apple (OS X) may call those software-defined layouts "keyboards", but
Linux may call them keyboard mappings or "keymaps", and Windows probably
calls them something else.

Thinking about this a little more, I am wondering whether setxkbmap
exists in a macports incarnation, and if it does, whether it might allow
you to set up different keymaps that a macports-based bibledit will
recognize... OS X is a foreign world to me, but that seems like it could
be worth exploring as a possible way forward for you.

YES: http://www.macports.org/ports.php?by=library&substr=setxkbmap

My initial guess is that setxkbmap and the related xorg-libxkbfile
library are something that GUI macports programs can (hopefully!) use to
deal with keyboard mappings.

On the Mac side of things, SIL has a page with links to technical info
on Mac keyboard layouts and related software, at

  http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?item_id=inputtoollinks

which might become relevant later if we end up having to really dig
deeply into all this.

> but no matter which keyboard I choose, all I get is English in Bible
> edit.

This really sounds to me as though whatever keyboard input routines
Bibledit uses are simply unaware of the keyboard layout change stuff
that the other (native OS X) programs use.  So either macports programs
simply don't do keyboard mappings (unlikely), or else they use some
other mechanism for switching between them than native OS X programs do
(maybe setxkbmap, or maybe something else entirely).

> -->Windows 
> I am able to type in Thai and Khmer, haven't verified all key
> combinations, but it looks good.

> -->Linux
> Selecting keyboards works. I can type in Thai and Lao.

OK, good.  It may seem basic to you, but that's really useful info for
this issue.  Incidentally, how exactly are you selecting keyboards
(keymaps) in Linux?

> -->mac
> So, confirmation that it is only a mac problem.  Now how do we fix
> it?  I am willing to install applications via macports to test.
> Please give me a list to install and I will test them.

Apparently I'm a step or two ahead of you :)  See above: please try
abiword, bluefish, and gedit .

If you want even *more* homework, after that you could check out the
macports setxkbmap port I just found, and see if you can do anything
with it.  It is a command line tool, and so may be a little awkward for
you to get started with.  Use the command   man setxkbmap   after
installing it, and read that manpage, and then ask for further help if
you need it.  I think it is unlikely, but we might even need a
macports-based terminal emulator to run setxkbmap in; I'm not at all
sure how X integration works between a native OS X Terminal and the X
stuff that bibledit uses.

> Thank you so much for your help and guidance. 

You're welcome.

Jonathan