About

This program is a contribution to the community of greek UNIX users. It makes it possible to change keyboard mapping with alt-shift or meta-shift combinations or by clicking on the flag image. You will be able to write greek in X programs like netscape or xedit. You must have the greek fonts, which are not provided with this package.

New versions of the software can be found at: http://www.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~sivann/xgrk

Compatibility

Keycodes are auto-loaded on startup so it should work with all unices and keyboard layouts.

This program has been tested with:

-Linux (2.2.5) (XFree)
-FreeBSD
-Sun Ultra1 with Solaris 2.7 with the default sun's X11R6 and 24bit display -Silicon Graphics Indy R5500 with IRIX 6.2 the default X server and 8bit display

Requirements

The XPM library (libXpm) which can be downloaded from:

ftp://koala.inria.fr/pub/xpm/

Installation

run make
copy the xgrk binary somewhere like /usr/local/X11/bin

Usage

You don't have to be root to run this software. For the following information, left or right keys are the same. Note that none of the keys has to be pressed at the same time, only the right order matters.

Keyboard switching:          Alt + Shift 
Accent:                      ';' and then the  letter
diaeresis (dialitika):       Shift + ';' and then the letter
accented diaeresis:          ';' then Shift+';' and then the letter

Characters ';' and ':' are mapped to the 'q' key in greek mode.

You may also switch language by clicking onto the flag.

Command line options

-poll           poll the xserver for keyboard stat every 25000 us (default)
-event          event based keyboard monitoring
-noflag         don't display a window
-display        display to connect to
-geometry       where to popup
-pi             default value is 25000 microseconds.
                If set too high, it will miss keystrokes,
                if set too low, it will eat up cpu.
-rd             default value is 100000 microseconds.
                If set too high, you'll get many accented greek characters.
                If set too low, characters won't be accented.
-save           save current keycodes 
-restore        restore previously saved keycodes
-v              be verbose

It is a good idea to put the following in your .xinitrc: xgrk -save
And have a mouse menu to run the following: xgrk -restore

Notes for greek support in Netscape

Trick for netscape to display correctly greek fonts in forms & buttons:

Start netscape with : netscape -xrm "documentFonts.charsetiso8859-7:iso-8859-1"
Go to Edit->Preferences-Fonts, choose 8859-1 (netscape thinks that greek fonts are 8859-1 now), and choose a greek font like Lucidasansgreek for the Variable Width Font field. Do the same for the Fixed Width font.

You're set. You can now use pages like http://www.hellasyellow.gr/onom.html and write greek in the forms.

Notes for fvwm2

Add theese to the appropriate fields in your .fvwm2rc:

fvwm2 style:
Style "xgrk" RandomPlacement ,NoTitle, StaysOnTop, NoHandles, BorderWidth 0

fvwm2 swallow option.Very cool, it gets swallowed as a button in the bar: *FvwmButtons( Center Size 60 40 Swallow(UseOld) xgrk `Exec exec xgrk &`)

BUGS

Well there should be many bugs. Please mail bug corrections and reports to sivann@softlab.ece.ntua.gr

Known BUGS/FEATURES

Keys Alt+Shift or Shift+';' don't have to be pressed at the same time.

MORE HELP

New versions of the software can be found at: http://www.softlab.ece.ntua.gr/~sivann/xgrk

Other usefull info can be found at: "http://www.hri.org"

-Spiros Ioannou
sivann@softlab.ece.ntua.gr