Testing Medley's virtual keyboard with an Italian keyboard

[pamoroso]

As discussed in the February 10, 2025 implementation meeting I set out to test Medley's Italian virtual keyboard with my Italian keyboard. I ran VIRTUALKEYBOARDS under X Medley, with and without VNC, on Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon.

This is my keyboard:

And this is Medley's virtual keyboard:

Without VNC, typing any unshifted or shifted key of the numeric row flashes the screen. Typing shifted or unshifted keys in non alphabetic areas flashes the screen or does nothing. For example, typing , flashes the screen and ò does nothing.

The situation slightly improves with VNC (God bless it 😀). I can enter some of the accented letters by typing on the physical keyboard the corresponding keys of the virtual keyboard. For example, Shift-4 produces ì and Shift-5 produces ò. But most of the symbols are at different locations on the two keyboards and typing produces the wrong symbol or nothing at all. For example, Shift-2 produces " instead of á, Shift-3 does nothing instead of è, and Shift-7 produces a black box instead of &.

Typing the three shifted or unshifted keys just to the right of L on the physical keyboard does nothing.

I can enter some symbols by pressing the keys labeled with the corresponding symbols on the physical keyboard which, however, are elsewhere on the virtual keyboard. For example, the key labeled \| (| is shifted) is immediately to the left of 1 on the physical and to the left of DELETE WORD on the virtual keyboard.

As @rmkaplan noted, switching to a virtual keyboard breaks the mouse scroll wheel with and without VNC: turning the wheel enters black boxes in a TTY. With either keyboard there's no way of entering <, >, or @ with or without VNC. Finally, without VNC switching back to the default keyboard after using the Italian virtual keyboard freezes Medley: typing at an Exec or clicking the mouse buttons does nothing.

A non English virtual keyboard is unusable. So far Medley X under VNC provides the best experience with ASCII and my setup, except for the minor issues noted in #1828 and #1985.

[rmkaplan]

A couple of observations: First, from the images it seems like our layout characters for the virtual Italian keyboard doesn't match your physical Italian keyboard. So that should be fixed. But second, I now think I was confused and misleading in calling attention to the virtual keyboard package as a possible solution to your typing problem. That package is actually mapping the keys of a standard (Dandelion?) US keyboard to simulate the key layout of a different physical keyboard-type. But you end up with a double translation of some sort if you actually apply it to such a different keyboard. If you have a U.S. keyboard, does the Italian virtual behave any better (modulo the currently incorrect layout)? But this was a wild goose chase with respect to the underlying objective--sorry.

…

On Feb 11, 2025, at 2:51 AM, Paolo Amoroso ***@***.***> wrote: As discussed in the February 10, 2025 implementation meeting I set out to test Medley's Italian virtual keyboard with my Italian keyboard <https://journal.paoloamoroso.com/tedgen-keyboard-first-impressions>. I ran VIRTUALKEYBOARDS under X Medley, with and without VNC, on Linux Mint 22 Cinnamon. This is my keyboard: it-keyboard.jpg (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/18f7f0dc-9bbb-4c30-820a-03a60875d0a9> And this is Medley's virtual keyboard: medley-it-keyboard.png (view on web) <https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/d0c23f91-7c14-4800-b437-e8b74ace9790> Without VNC, typing any unshifted or shifted key of the numeric row flashes the screen. Typing shifted or unshifted keys in non alphabetic areas flashes the screen or does nothing. For example, typing , flashes the screen and ò does nothing. The situation slightly improves with VNC (God bless it 😀). I can enter some of the accented letters by typing on the physical keyboard the corresponding keys of the virtual keyboard. For example, Shift-4 produces ì and Shift-5 produces ò. But most of the symbols are at different locations on the two keyboards and typing produces the wrong symbol or nothing at all. For example, Shift-2 produces " instead of á, Shift-3 does nothing instead of è, and Shift-7 produces a black box instead of &. Typing the three shifted or unshifted keys just to the right of L on the physical keyboard does nothing. I can enter some symbols by pressing the keys labeled with the corresponding symbols on the physical keyboard which, however, are elsewhere on the virtual keyboard. For example, the key labeled \| (| is shifted) is immediately to the left of 1 on the physical and to the left of DELETE WORD on the virtual keyboard. As @rmkaplan <https://github.com/rmkaplan> noted, switching to a virtual keyboard breaks the mouse scroll wheel with and without VNC: turning the wheel enters black boxes in a TTY. With either keyboard there's no way of entering <, >, or @ with or without VNC. Finally, without VNC switching back to the default keyboard after using the Italian virtual keyboard freezes Medley: typing at an Exec or clicking the mouse buttons does nothing. A non English virtual keyboard is unusable. So far Medley X under VNC provides the best experience with ASCII and my setup, except for the minor issues noted in #1828 <#1828> and #1985 <#1985>. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#2029>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AQSTUJLYPF46WG3YDZLIAVT2PHI2LAVCNFSM6AAAAABW4XE6DWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43ERDJONRXK43TNFXW4OZXHE2DKNZYHE>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[pamoroso]

I don't have any US keyboards, only Italian ones.