Orca Caps Lock Issue

Caps Lock key doesn't work is the most common complaint from Orca screen readers users. On Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx I found that Caps Lock is reset mysteriously. Here is workaround you can use until we find the culprit responsible for this.

Debugging with xmodmap

You find the present keymaps setting with xmodmap command. You can see that the line starting 'lock' is empty. We can set it properly with xmodmap -e "add Lock = Caps_Lock".

$ xmodmap 
xmodmap:  up to 4 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock      
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_R (0x6c),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3      
mod4        Super_L (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c),  Mode_switch (0xcb)

# Set the Caps_Lock with xmodmap 
$ xmodmap -e "add Lock = Caps_Lock"

# Now caps lock works properly
$ xmodmap 
xmodmap:  up to 4 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x42)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Alt_R (0x6c),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3      
mod4        Super_L (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce),  Hyper_L (0xcf)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c),  Mode_switch (0xcb)



 Bash Autostart script for setting Caps lock

 Now we know that this can be fixed so I used a bash script to call the modmap script everytime we boot. Somehow '.Xmodmap' settings are not getting loaded so I am using an alternative script '.xmodmaprc' and call it from .bashrc file manually.  

# .xmodmaprc
xmodmap -e "add Lock = Caps_Lock"

# .bashrc
if [ -f ~/.xmodmaprc ]; then
    . ~/.xmodmaprc
fi

Reboot the computer and enable the modmap file to be loaded at boot time.





PS: Kudos to dotslashblog for the xmodmaprc solution

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Linux Wx Notation Phonetic Keyboard layout for Devangari (Hindi)

Few hours ago WX notation phonetic keyboard layout for Devnagari(Hindi) has been included into Ubuntu. This closes the ubuntu #274024 and freedesktop-bugs #19753 reported last year. This is a great news for the Wx keyboard users, they can now have this keyboard layout by default in gnu/Linux.

While at University of Hyderabad I had copy the symbols file for the keyboard layout every time a new gnu/Linux system was installed. Its wonderful to see a solution developed for use inside our lab has been contributed back to the gnu/Linux community worldwide.

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Multimedia/Internet Keyboards in GNU/Linux

As the resident Gnu/Linux guru, I sometimes help new users making transition from other OS’s.Over the years I’d ask anyone who installed Gnu/Linux about what hardware devices didn’t work for them,most often it is Multimedia/Internet keyboards. In this article, we’ll configure one such keyboard using Hotkeys.

Anthony Wong’s Hotkeys program is written to handle all those special keys provided by the multimedia/Internet keyboards and launch programs associated with them.Though there are numerous ways to configure these keyboards in Gnu/Linux,Hotkeys is easier to configure and its osd (on-screen display) is very simillar to those available on other OS’s.

You can visit Hotkeys site to download the latest version of the program as tarball or as a debian package.

The installation on Debian machine can be done using the apt-get.

$ apt-get install hotkeys

Configuration

Hotkeys starts a daemon process,usually started with xinit process,it uses a global configuration file /etc/hotkeys.conf and user configuration’s can be stored in $HOME/.hotkeysrc.

The hotkeys.conf configuration is well commentted, should not present any problems to new users.Its contains can be summed up as

1) Device Settings

Keyboard Type (kbd=”“)
CD Drive (CDROM=”“)

The supported keyboards can be checked with ‘hotkeys -l’.

2) Key Behaviour

Tag = ‘command’ (Play = “xmms —play-pause”)

The complete list of tags can be found in /usr/share/doc/hotkeys/sample.xml file.The users can also create their own tags.

3) On-Screen Display Properties

Font (osd_font=”“)
Color (osd_color=”“)
Position (osd_position=”“)

#Sample /etc/hotkeys.conf file.
#########################

1. Global configuration for hotkeys #
   #########################
   
   
   
   
   1. These are the default values.
   
   
   2. A line starting with # is a comment.
   
   
   3. Specify the default keyboard (without the .def extension) so you
   
   
   
   4. don’t need to specify -t every time
      
      Kbd=hp5181
      
      CDROM=/dev/cdrom # use ‘none’ if don’t have a CDROM Drive
      PrevTrack=xmms —rew
      Play=xmms —play-pause
      Stop=xmms —stop
      Pause=xmms —pause
      NextTrack=xmms —fwd
      Rewind=
      WebBrowser=mozilla
      Email=mozilla -mail
      Calculator=xcalc
      FileManager=gmc
      MyComputer=gmc
      MyDocuments=gmc
      Favorites=gnome-moz-remote —remote=openBookmarks
      Transfer=gtp
      Record=grecord
      Shell=xterm -rv
      ScreenSaver=xscreensaver-command -activate
      NewsReader=mozilla -news
      Communities=mozilla -remote ‘openURL(http://slashdot.org)’
      
      Search=mozilla -remote ‘openURL(http://google.com)’
      Idea=mozilla -remote ‘openURL(http://sourceforge.net)’
      Shopping=mozilla -remote ‘openURL(http://thinkgeek.com)’
      Go=mozilla -remote ‘openURL(http://linux.com)’
      Print=lpr
      Rotate=
      
      
      osd_font=-arphic-ar pl kaitim big5-bold-i-normal—0-250-0-0-c-0-*-*
   
   
   5. For the color, you can either use the strings in /etc/X11/rgb.txt,
   
   
   6. or use the RGB syntax #RRGGBB, e.g. ##A086FF
      
      osd_color=LawnGreen
      
      osd_timeout=3
   
   
   7. osd_position is either ‘top’ or ‘bottom’
      
      
      osd_position=bottom
      
      osd_offset=25
   
   

Configure Unsupported Multimedia/Internet keyboard

The Hotkeys program is still under development,you may not find your keyboard in the default list.To configure your keyboard, find out the keycodes of the all special keys on your keyboard.

Use the xev program to capture the keycodes and save it to file.Move your cursor to square on the xev window and press the special keys in a sequence.

$ xev 2>&1 >mykeys

Search the file for the keycodes.

$ grep ‘keycode’ mykeys | cut -d “ “ -f7,8 >mykeycodes

Check the file to see the keycodes.

$ cat mykeycodes

keycode 223

keycode 166

keycode 151

keycode 232

keycode 159

keycode 153


keycode 144

keycode 165

keycode 158

keycode 146

keycode 178

keycode 150

keycode 148

keycode 149

keycode 173


keycode 164

keycode 163

keycode 162

keycode 161

keycode 152

keycode 160

keycode 174

keycode 176

keycode 64

Hotkeys uses XML to define keycodes and their functionality.These are stored as ‘.def’ files in /usr/share/hotkeys directory.Let’s use the sample.xml file provided by the hotkeys to build a custom keyboard definition file.

$ cp /usr/share/doc/hotkeys/sample.xml /usr/share/hotkeys/custom.def

The hotkeys support various pre-defined ‘tags’ like Sleep, Search, Shopping andvarious CD/DVD player controls

(See /usr/share/doc/hotkeys/sample.xml). Each ‘tag’ has a behaviour assigned, Sleep uses APM to turn your computer into hibrnatio.Many other special function keys can also be configured.

For example the half-moon key on my keyboard is configured using ‘Sleep’ tag.

<Sleep keycode=“223”/>

And un-defined Shortcut key is set with.

<code>
<userdef keycode="232" command="xterm">Xterm</userdef>
</code>

Here is how the custom.def appears with the above examples.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
 <definition>
 <config model="My custom keyboard">
 <!-- Support Tags functions -->  
 <!-- half-moon key -->

 <Sleep  keycode="223"/> 
 <!-- User define functions -->
<userdef keycode="232" command="xterm">Xterm</userdef>
 </config>

<contributor>
<name>your-name</name>
<email>your-email</email>
 </contributor>
<definition>

Now test the custom.def by using it as your keyboard type.

$ hotkeys -t custom

A lot more keys can be set using the same custom.def file, a little effort pays off really well.If you have configured a new Multimedia/Internet keyboard using hotkeys, do take time to send it project developers, it would help many other users with same keyboards.

Web Resources

Hotkeys Help Forum

Hotkeys Project

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