Setting a keyboard layout as soon, as simply as possible when booting live e.g. from the .iso

[grahamperrin]

Pending resolution of helloSystem/hello#8 and/or helloSystem/hello#36

Re: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/boot-introduction.html#idp56816120

With Escape presenting the loader prompt: can a layout be set at this point?

If so, what's the syntax?

---

If not, I guess it'll be:

1. unset boot_mute
2. boot -s
3. …
4. mount -uw /
5. ee /etc/rc.conf
6. …
7. exit

(I'm most familiar with non-Mac keymap="uk.kbd" set in the rc.conf on my non-helloSystem FreeBSD-CURRENT.)

[probonopd]

can a layout be set at this point?
If so, what's the syntax?

I do not know. Can you please research this using FreeBSD resources? I do know that we can already read EFI variables there. So if we could already set the keyboard layout in the bootloader, that would be really nice.

[grahamperrin]

A real struggle for me. I could not even figure out how to set/change the layout (or should I say mapping?) after startup:

In essence: I want Alt and Control to be not transposed; for Control-X to work as expected in nano, and so on.

After a few mistakes I added keymap="uk.kbd" to /etc/rc.conf then restarted. Realised another mistake by me: the configuration is not persistent. My next attempt:

1. boot
2. Escape
3. boot -s -v Return
4. Return

– I'm at the single user mode command prompt (imagining a change to a configuration file before exiting to multi-user mode) but there's:

• no nano
• no ee

– and critically, vi does not work.

[probonopd]

How could one do this?

Isn't -s supposed to be barebones? E.g., as far as I remember also on the Mac the keyboard layout is plain English there even if you have selected another one...

[probonopd]

Relevant piece of code:
https://github.com/helloSystem/ISO/blob/experimental/overlays/uzip/localize/files/usr/local/sbin/localize

[grahamperrin]

Thanks. From the screenshot at #75 (comment) now I guess that it's wrong to aim for /etc/rc.conf

ISO/overlays/uzip/localize/files/usr/local/sbin/localize

Line 160 in ba7215d

print("setxkbmap needs to be run from within a graphical user session")

looks promising. So, for now:

– and I'll aim to get the mac variant/model conflicting stuff out of my way after the desktop environment appears.

[grahamperrin]

Success :-D with late settings (after appearance of the desktop environment).

Essentially

setxkbmap -model pc101 -layout gb,us -option compose:ralt

Observations

From a few minutes' use, I see just one problem with mappings:

• the runner should respond to Alt-F2

– it does not. It responds to Control-F2:

Observed after the recording: Q in terminal in response to Alt-F2

I'll take a look at this later.

---

Screen recording: https://photos.app.goo.gl/SYmjiXQpqd4PhinRA ▶ first recording

• Shift was invisible because I forgot to use option --vis-shift with screenkey
• ignore most of the tail end of the recording; I stupidly tried to run aspell.

[probonopd]

I see just one problem with mappings:

It is currently configured to do this (because Ctrl and Alt are swapped):

ISO/overlays/uzip/hello/files/usr/share/skel/.openbox

Line 320 in 76fa52d

<keybind key="C-F2">

We should probably bring all those things into the Shortcut Keys application so that they can easily be changed by the user (and are discoverable).

[grahamperrin]

https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/developer/ux-guidelines.html#avoiding-configuration-options

KDE Plasma is recommended as an alternative for users who wish to configure and customize every aspect of the system.