Re: Switching non-English keyboard layouts and using Emacs shortcuts

[Richard Wordingham]

On Wed, 13 May 2015 10:05:37 +0530
Shakthi Kannan <shakthimaan@gmail.com> wrote:

> I can switch to the Dvorak layout, use Emacs shortcuts and then switch
> back to enter unicode characters, but this is tedious.

> #1 Is there a way to program Emacs such that when I press "C-", then
> any key that follows needs to be interpreted from the Dvorak layout?

I don't know.

> #2 How do other people who use non-English layouts use Emacs shortcuts
> with their native language input method?

To be pedantic, as my native language input method inputs the Latin
script, I have no problems using it directly from X.

However, I also use non-Latin layouts.  In most applications, I use
the ibus input method, but that used not to work for Emacs with English
locales selected. As a result, I switched to using a quail keyboard, and
that avoids the problem you report.  The quail keyboard is simply
ignored when entering the shortcuts.  Unfortunately, a few commands
also ignore the quail keyboard for command input - one of these days
I'll investigate, fix and report.

I use the Emacs command set-input-method to select or change a quail
keyboard, and toggle-input-method to toggle between using and not using
a quail keyboard.  There are standard shortcuts for these
commands, but with the command line recall and completion facilities of
Emacs it's easier to just type their starts once at the beginning of
each Emacs session.  Because of the problem with shortcuts, it's not
worth using ibus now that it works in Emacs; I've stuck with quail.

I don't use setxkbmap to switch between X keyboards.  I just have four
X keyboards permanently defined (I am on Ubuntu 12.04) and rely on ibus
for the rest in non-Emacs applications.  I switch X keyboard by means
of the keyboard command​ ctrl/shift and ibus keyboard by alt/shift.
These commands were chosen so I could run multi-lingual editing sessions
in Emacs and LibreOffice on my Linux box from a Windows laptop with
Xming as X-server. Each window (= Emacs frame) has its own X- and ibus
keyboard selections.

Richard.