The Linux Danish/International HOWTO
Niels Kristian Bech Jensen, nkbj@image.dk
v1.3, 31 May 1997
This document describes how to configure Linux and various Linux
applications for Danish locale standards such as keyboard, font,
paper-size etc. It is hoped that Linux users from other places in
Western Europe will find this document useful too.
1. Introduction
All European users of almost any operating system have two problems:
The first is to tell the computer that you have a non-American
keyboard, and the second is to get the computer to display the special
characters. To make matters worse the applications themselves will
also consider you an exception if you are not an American and require
special options or the setting of environment variables.
Under Linux you change the way your computer interprets the keyboard
with the commands loadkeys and xmodmap. loadkeys will modify the
keyboard for plain Linux while xmodmap makes the modifications
necessary when the handshaking between X11 and Linux is imperfect.
To display the characters you need to tell your applications that you
use the ISO-8859-1 (a.k.a. Latin-1) international set of glyphs. This
is not always necessary, but a number of key applications need special
attention.
This HOWTO is intended to tell Danish users how to do this. If you
continue to have troubles after reading this you can try the German
HOWTO, the Keystroke mini-HOWTO or the ISO 8859-1 FAQ. Many of the
hints contained herein are cribbed from there. See section ``Other
documents of relevance'' for pointers to these documents. You should
also send me a mail describing your troubles.
A final problem is that error-messages, menus and documentation of
applications are always in English. There's a GNU project under way to
address this problem. You can see what it's all about by downloading
the file ABOUT-NLS or the package gettext-0.10.tar.gz (or any later
version) from your favourite mirror of prep.ai.mit.edu. This project
needs volunteers for the translations. Send a mail to da-
request@li.org with the body ``subscribe'' if you want to contribute
to the Danish part of the project. The documentation in the gettext
package describes how to use such translations in your own programs.
2. Keyboard setup
2.1. Loading a keytable
You have two tools for configuring your keyboard. Under plain Linux
you have loadkeys and under X11 you have xmodmap.
To try out loadkeys type one of these two commands:
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk.map
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map
The difference between the two keymaps is that dk-latin1.map enables
`dead' keys while dk.map doesn't. Dead keys are explained in section
``Dead keys and accented characters''. The program loadkeys and the
keymaps are part of the package kbd-0.??.tar.gz which (with differing
version numbers ??) is available with all Linux distributions.
Usually loadkeys is executed at boot-time from one of the scripts
under the directory /etc/rc.d/. Details vary between distributions.
(Note for non-Danish readers: Support for other languages is enabled
in a similar manner. Use es.map for Spanish keyboards etc.)
X11 will normally follow the keymap used by plain Linux, but you can
modify keyboard behavior under X11 with xmodmap. Usually the X11
initialization process will run this command automatically if you have
a file called .Xmodmap in your home directory.
2.2. Getting the AltGr key to work under X11
For versions of XFree86 up to and including v3.1.2 you should edit the
file /etc/X11/XF86Config (or possibly /etc/XF86Config) and make sure
the line
RightAlt ModeShift
appears in the Keyboard section. Usually you can do this by uncomment�
ing the appropriate line. In XFree86 v3.1.2 you can use AltGr as an
alias for RightAlt.
In XFree86 v3.2 you should have the following Keyboard section in your
/etc/XF86Config file (it is made automatically by the program
XF86Setup if you choose a Danish keytable):
Section "Keyboard"
Protocol "Standard"
XkbRules "xfree86"
XkbModel "pc101"
XkbLayout "dk"
XkbVariant "nodeadkeys"
EndSection
The only available keyboard variant at the moment is ``nodeadkeys'',
but the dead keys can still be made to work. See section ``Dead keys
and accented characters'' for more information on this.
2.3. Dead keys and accented characters
Dead keys are those which don't type anything until you hit another
key. Tildes and umlauts are like this by default under plain Linux if
you use the dk-latin1.map keymap. This is the default behaviour for
these keys under Microsoft Windows as well.
2.3.1. Removing dead key functionality
Under plain Linux type
loadkeys dk.map
2.3.2. Invoking dead key functionality
� Invoking dead key functionality under plain Linux
Under plain Linux type
loadkeys dk-latin1.map
� Invoking dead key functionality under X11R6 sessions
First you must make sure you are running XFree86 v3.1.2 or higher.
Download and install everything related to the newest release if
you have a lower version number. Neither compose nor dead keys
won't work in X11R6 applications unless these are compiled with
support for this input method. A useful example of such an
application is GNU emacs version 19.30 (or higher).
Next you'll have to map a key to Compose or (equivalently)
Multi_key. The Scroll Lock key is most likely already mapped as
such if you use XFree86 v3.1.2 (you can verify this with the
program xev), and it is easy to map the right Control key by
uncommenting the appropriate line in the Keyboard section of the
XFree86 configuration file (often /etc/X11/XF86Config). If you wish
to use some other key, or if you are using XFree86 v3.2 and want to
change the default, you should put something like
keycode 78 = Multi_key
in your ~/.Xmodmap file. The default Compose key in XFree86 v3.2 is
<Shift><AltGr>.
XFree86 v3.2 comes without support for the dead keys on the standard
Danish keyboard. You can get this support by adding the following
lines to your ~/.Xmodmap file (or changing the lines if they are
already there):
keycode 21 = dead_acute dead_grave bar
keycode 35 = dead_diaeresis dead_circumflex dead_tilde
Finally make sure your shell and/or application is set up for
ISO-8859-1 compatibility as described in section ``International
character sets in specific applications'' and you should be all set.
You can e.g. get � by typing <Compose><a><~>. If dead keys work under
plain Linux they should also work under X11 now.
The available keystroke combinations are compiled in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose. There are some bugs in
this table you will want to fix:
1. The line reading
<dead_tilde> <space> : "~" tilde
should be changed to
<dead_tilde> <space> : "~" asciitilde
2. In several places asciicircum is misspelled as asciicirum
Some X applications does not support this general input method.
Eventually this situation might improve, but until then you can either
hack your applications or submit polite bug reports to their authors.
The latter method is often the most efficient. See section
``Programming tips for X11'' for some advice on what needs to be done.
2.4. Making $ (the dollar sign), � (oslash) and � (Oslash) work
2.4.1. $ (the dollar sign)
There's a bug in the Danish keymaps causing the dollar sign to be
accessed with <Shift><4> instead of <AltGr><4> by default. If this is
a problem for you, determine what keymap you load at boot-time. You
can find it by looking around in the directory /etc/rc.d/ or simply by
paying attention to what happens at boot-time. On my computer the
relevant keymap is called /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map. You
can fix the problem by changing the line
keycode 5 = four dollar dollar
in the keymap file to
keycode 5 = four currency dollar
and then loading the keytable as described in section ``Loading a
keytable''. Currency (Dansk: ``soltegn'') is the default <Shift><4>
character on a Danish keyboard.
This fixes the problem for both X11 and plain Linux.
2.4.2. � (oslash) and � (Oslash)
On some older distributions � and � appear as cent and yen. Find the
line for keycode 40 in the keymap file and change it from
keycode 40 = cent yen
to
keycode 40 = +oslash +Ooblique
Note: This bug appears to have been fixed in kbd-0.88.tar.gz and newer
versions.
The plus signs are necessary to get Caps Lock working properly. Oslash
can be used as an alias for Ooblique in kbd-0.90.tar.gz and newer
versions.
3. Display and application setup
Most applications need to be compiled as ``8-bit-clean'' to work well
with European characters. Actually they often need a few extra hints
to get it right.
3.1. Loading the Latin-1 character set on the console
Execute the following commands under the bash shell:
setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/lat1-16.psf
mapscrn /usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/trivial
echo -ne '\033(K'
You could also choose to load a unicode font, which (in my opinion) is
much nicer than lat1-16.psf and seems to be more stable:
setfont /usr/lib/kbd/consolefonts/iso01.f16
mapscrn /usr/lib/kbd/consoletrans/iso01.uni
echo -ne '\033(K'
If you use Linux kernels v1.3.1 or higher, you don't need the mapscrn
and echo statements when you use unicode fonts.
Note: This only has effect under plain Linux.
3.2. Characters you can display under Linux
Type dumpkeys -l | less at the prompt to find out which characters
that are readily available. You can map them to your keyboard via the
keymap files mentioned in section ``Loading a keytable''.
3.3. International character sets in specific applications
A number of applications demand special attention. This section
describes how to set up configuration files for them.
bash :
Put the following in your ~/.inputrc file:
set meta-flag on
set convert-meta off
set output-meta on
tcsh :
Put the following in your /etc/csh.cshrc or ~/.tcshrc file:
setenv LANG C
Actually you just have to define one of the environment variables
LANG or LC_CTYPE. The value doesn't matter. Read the tcsh man page
for more information.
ls :
Issue the command as
ls -N
or possibly
ls --8bit
less :
Set the following environment variable:
LESSCHARSET=latin1
elm :
Put the following definitions in your ~/.elm/elmrc file:
charset = iso-8859-1
displaycharset = iso-8859-1
textencoding = 8bit
This may not work on some versions of elm.
pine :
Put the following definition in your ~/.pinerc file:
character-set=ISO-8859-1
This can also be set via the Setup option in pine.
tin :
Put the following definitions in your ~/.tin/headers file:
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Now you can post messages with the proper Danish characters in the
message body.
lynx :
Put the following definition in your ~/.lynxrc file:
character_set=ISO Latin 1
This can also be set via the Options menu in lynx. Type `o' and set
the relevant option.
telnet :
Put one line of the following type in your ~/.telnetrc file for
each host you want to log on to using telnet:
<hostname> set outbinary true
Example:
localhost set outbinary true
foo.bar.dk set outbinary true
kermit :
This is as close as I can get, but not completely satisfying
yet. Put the following in your ~/.kermrc file:
set terminal bytesize 8
set command bytesize 8
set file bytesize 8
set language danish
set file character-set latin1-iso
set transfer character-set latin1-iso
set terminal character-set latin1-iso
I think there are more variables to set, but they are hiding. You
would have to modify these settings if the remote system is DOS or
OS/2 based.
emacs :
Put the following in your ~/.emacs or the the system-wide
initialization file (probably /usr/lib/emacs/site-
lisp/default.el or /usr/share/emacs/site-lisp/default.el):
(standard-display-european t)
(set-input-mode (car (current-input-mode))
(nth 1 (current-input-mode))
0)
Dead keys should work under GNU emacs provided you use GNU emacs
v19.30 or higher and XFree86 v3.1.2 or higher (it works for me
anyway), so don't start researching available elisp packages
implementing ``electric keys'' or anything like that. If you want
to implement European keyboard conventions in emacs without
upgrading, the best choice is probably the remap package available
from the SunSite DK server (see section ``FTP and Web sites''.)
There are also two packages called iso-acc.elc and iso-trans.elc
included with emacs that has similar functionality, but they are
not nearly as powerful.
ispell - Spell checking in Danish :
First make sure that you install version 3.1 instead of version
4.0 of ispell. The latter is obsolete and multiple brain-
damaged. You can download the sources for ispell at the GNU
archive at prep.ai.mit.edu, and you can get a Danish dictionary
via FTP from Aalborg University Center
<ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/packages/dkispell/>. Follow the
compilation instructions and you should have no trouble (One
caveat: When defining the variables necessary for compilation
you must tell ispell that Linux is a Sys V type OS by defining
the variable USG.)
(Note for non-Danish readers: You can find dictionaries for most
Western languages by reading the file Where included with the
sources for ispell.)
TeX/LaTeX :
There are several problems with TeX/LaTeX: You want LaTeX to
understand the special characters and you don't want LaTeX to
put in English words like ``Chapter'' at the beginning of every
chapter or use English typesetting conventions.
Under LaTeX2e the header should look something like this:
\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage{t1enc}
\usepackage[danish]{babel}
The first usepackage statement ensures that LaTeX will interpret
European characters correctly, so you don't have to use escape
codes for European characters. The second isn't strictly necessary;
but it is recommended to include it to use the new DC-fonts (which
of course must be installed). These two packages are most likely
included in your TeX distribution. The last usepackage statement
defines a range of standards for use in Danish texts.
If you use the Debian distribution (or older Slackware) you'll have
to install Danish hyphenation tables yourself (Dansk:
``hyphenation''=``orddeling''). These are available from Aalborg
University Center <ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/packages/>. The files
you need are dkhyphen.tex, dkcommon.tex and dkspecial.tex. If you
use the teTeX distribution (distributed with e.g. RedHat and
S.u.S.E.) you already have the relevant files. Essentially you
need to put these into the directory containing international
hyphenation tables, edit the appropriate language dependency file
(usually called language.dat) and finally rebuild LaTeX with
initex. Before you do anything, please make sure you know what
files you are changing and back them up in advance.
If you use NTeX (distributed with the Slackware distribution) you
will have a configuration script called ntm-ltx.cfg located in
/usr/lib/texmf/tools/. In that case put the hyphenation tables in
the the relevant directory (most likely called
/usr/lib/texmf/tex/hyphenation/) and run the script. It will guide
you through the various steps described below. If you use teTeX
there's a somewhat more advanced program called texconfig to help
you.
Below is a description for enabling Danish hyphenation by hand. If
it looks vague it's because TeX/LaTeX installations differ very
much in their choice of path-names.
1. Find out where you have the hyphenation tables. Under NTeX
they are in /usr/lib/texmf/tex/hyphenation/, under teTeX in
/usr/lib/texmf/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/. Try issuing the
command find /usr/lib/ -iname '*hyph*' -print if you can't
find the directory.
2. Check if the hyphenation tables are already there. If not put
the hyphenation tables mentioned above in this directory.
3. Edit the file (probably) called language.dat. In the teTeX
distribution you can just uncomment the appropriate line.
Otherwise insert a line reading
danish dkhyphen.tex
If you have difficulty finding language.dat try issuing the com�
mand find /usr/lib/ -name language.dat -print
4. Find and back up the file latex.fmt. It could be in a variety
of places. Use find /usr/lib/ -name latex.fmt -print to find
it.
5. Go to the directory where you found latex.fmt. Issue the
command initex latex.ltx. Pray. If everything went well you
now have a new version of latex.fmt.
6. You can now use
\usepackage[danish]{babel}
in your LaTeX headers. Hyphenation should be reasonably correct,
quotation marks follow Danish conventions, chapters are now
called ``Kapitel'' instead of ``Chapter'' etc.
All new Linux distributions now includes LaTeX2e.
(Note for non-Danish readers: The process is similar for other
Western European languages, and the necessary files are normally
included in the Linux distributions.)
In LaTeX 2.09, use
\documentstyle[a4,isolatin]{article}
to include support for ISO-8859-1 characters and European paper
sizes.
isolatin.sty is available from all DANTE servers (see section ``FTP
and Web sites'') and from Michael Gschwind's FTP site
<ftp://ftp.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at/pub/8bit>. It should also be
included in the standard Linux distributions.
Note: Some people prefer using emacs in a special mode which
translates ``special'' letters into TeX escape codes, but this
method should be obsolete by now.
4. Miscellaneous problems
4.1. Time zone
Denmark is placed in the Central European Time zone (CET or MET),
which (in the winter) is equivalent to Greenwich Middle Time plus 1
(GMT+1). You set the time zone on a Linux system by making a symbolic
link between /usr/lib/zoneinfo/localtime and the file in
/usr/lib/zoneinfo/ with a name corresponding to your zone or country.
Danes will want to execute one of the commands
ln -sf /usr/lib/zoneinfo/MET /etc/localtime
or
ln -sf /usr/lib/zoneinfo/Europe/Copenhagen /etc/localtime
This automatically sets Daylight Saving Time (GMT+2) in the summer.
You synchronize the system time with the CMOS clock by issuing the
command clock. If your CMOS clock is set to Greenwich time (the
standard on proper Unix systems) use
clock -u -s
or if your CMOS clock is set to local time use
clock -s
4.2. A4 papersize
� - in ghostscript: Add the command line option -sPAPERSIZE=a4.
� - in ghostview: Define the following Xresource:
Ghostview.pageMedia: A4
� - in dvips: Edit the file /usr/lib/texmf/dvips/config.ps or
~/.dvips.
� - in xdvi: Define the Xresource
XDvi.paper: a4
� - in TeX/LaTeX: See the entry for TeX/LaTeX in section
``International character sets in specific applications''.
4.3. Text file formats for other platforms
You can translate files between an ISO-8859-1 formatted text file and
e.g. a DOS text file using codepage 850 with the recode package. A DOS
file called foo.txt would be translated into a proper Unix file with
the command
recode cp850:latin1 foo.txt
recode is available as recode-3.4.tar.gz from all mirrors of
prep.ai.mit.edu.
5. Programming tips for X11
Displaying 8-bit charaters is easy. You can use them just as you would
use 7-bit ASCII. Getting applications to accept input of special
characters is an entirely different matter.
If you're using e.g. the Xt toolkit and a widget set like Motif you
need only add one line to your program. As your first call to Xt use
XtSetLanguageProc. Like this:
int main (int argc, char** argv)
{
...
XtSetLanguageProc (NULL, NULL, NULL);
top = XtAppInitialize ( ... );
...
}
Now your program will automagically look up the LC_CTYPE variable and
interpret dead keys etc. according to the Compose tables in
/usr/lib/X11/locale/. This should work for all Western European key�
board layouts and is entirely portable. As XFree86 multilanguage sup�
port gets better your program will also be useful in Eastern Europe
and the Middle East.
This method of input is supported by Xt, Xlib and Motif v1.2 (and
higher). According to the information I have available it is not
supported by Xaw. If you have further information on this subject I'd
like to hear from you.
This section was adapted from a more extensive discussion in Michael
Gschwind's FAQ on Programming for Internationalization. See section
``Other documents of relevance'' for pointers to the full document.
6. Getting X11 applications to speak Danish
To get Danish texts on menus, buttons, etc. in a well behaved X11
application, you just have to translate the resource strings defining
the texts. Jacob Nordfalk, nordfalk@cats.nbi.dk has done such
translations for a lot of applications including Netscape and
Ghostview. The translations and a description of how to install them
can be found on his homepage <http://alf.nbi.dk/~nordfalk/ovs/>.
7. References and FTP sites
7.1. Other documents of relevance
The HOWTOs ought to be available from all mirrors of sunsite.unc.edu
and tsx-11.mit.edu. A Danish mirror at the Web is SunSite DK
<http://sunsite.auc.dk/ldp/HOWTO/>.
The German HOWTO (in German) by Winfried Tr�mper.
The Portugese HOWTO (in Portugese) by Joao Carlos Rodrigues Pereira.
The Italian HOWTO (in Italian) by Marco ``Gaio'' Gaiarin.
The Keystroke mini-HOWTO by Zenon Fortuna.
The Locales mini-HOWTO by Peeter Joot. (This one is mainly for
developers.)
The ISO-8859-1 FAQ and Programming for Internationalization FAQ (plus
much more) by Michael Gschwind is available from his homepage
<http://www.vlsivie.tuwien.ac.at/mike/i18n.html>.
7.2. FTP and Web sites
The Linux Danish/International HOWTO has its own homepage
<http://www.image.dk/~nkbj/>, which always has the latest version on-
line. It also has other informations for Danish users of Linux.
This FTP site at Aalborg University Center
<ftp://ftp.iesd.auc.dk/pub/packages/> has Danish hyphenation tables,
dictionary for ispell etc. AUC is also the home of SunSite DK
<ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/os/linux/> which has the RedHat and Debian
distributions, the latest kernels, the Linux Documentation Project
<http://sunsite.auc.dk/ldp/>, a mirror of sunsite.unc.edu
<ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/os/linux/sunsite/> and the remap package for
emacs <ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/packages/auctex/>.
DENet has mirrors of the Slackware distribution
<ftp://ftp.denet.dk/pub/OS/Linux/> and the GNU archives
<ftp://ftp.denet.dk/pub/gnu/>.
SunSite <ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/> and mirrors. doc/howto has
the above mentioned HOWTOs. utils/nls and subdirectories contain files
related to National Language Support. Developers should take a look
at locale-tutorial-0.8.txt.gz, locale-pack-0.8.tar.gz and cat-
pack.tar.gz.
The GNU archives <ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/> has the recode
package for character table conversion, the ABOUT-NLS file and the
gettext package for locale support of some GNU applications and (of
course) the latest versions of GNU emacs.
The DANTE FTP site <ftp://ftp.dante.de/> has everything needed for TeX
and LaTeX support.
8. Post-amble: Acknowledgments and Copyright
Thanks to Peter Dalgaard, Anders Majland, Jon Haugsand, Jacob
Nordfalk, the authors of the German HOWTO, Michael Gschwind and
numerous others for suggestions and help with several questions. And a
big thanks to the people at Aalborg University Center for writing and
making available several of the packages described in this document.
This HOWTO is copyrighted by Thomas Petersen, petersen@post1.tele.dk
(the original author) and Niels Kristian Bech Jensen, nkbj@image.dk.
It is distributed as other Linux HOWTOs under the terms described
below.
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