Typing Greek on a UK keyboard under Linux

What’s the problem?

The problem is that Greek keyboards are based on the United States layout: for example, they have the ‘commercial at’ symbol ‘@’ on shift-2, which, to us Britishers, is where double quote should be. So the natural way of configuring your keyboard to work in either Roman or Greek characters leaves you with US-layout punctuation when in Greek mode, which is not ideal if your keyboard has a UK layout.

The information below applies to the Debian ‘Woody’ distribution, and is independent of desktop programs such as Gnome or KDE. Other distributions may be sufficiently similar for the information to be helpful. There may well be an easier way to achieve all this: if you know of one, please let me know. One alternative approach involves using UTF-8 encodings; this can, however, create more problems than it solves.

Step 1: make sure you have some suitable fonts

You will need suitable fonts for the ordinary Roman character set (ISO-8859-1), which covers most of the western European languages, and for the Greek character set (ISO-8859-7). You may already have such fonts installed:

xlsfonts | grep fixed.*8859-1

and

xlsfonts | grep fixed.*8859-7

should tell you. Try commands like

xterm -fn -etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso8859-7 &

until you find a font you like the look of. If you don’t have any ISO-8859-7 fonts installed, you will need to find a suitable package. Try

apt-cache search 8859-7

and see what’s available. I installed the package xfonts-intl-european:

apt-get install xfonts-intl-european

which includes the font mentioned in the example command above. (You need to be root to install new packages.)

Step 2: create new xterm commands

You need to be root for the following steps.

You can now create a couple of new commands to simplify running xterms using the new fonts. I created two new files in /usr/local/bin: xterm1 to run a terminal with the ISO-8859-1 character set, and xterm7, to run a terminal with the ISO-8859-7 character set:

/usr/local/bin/xterm1:

  export LANG=en_GB
  xterm -T "xterm en_GB (ISO 8859-1)" -fn -misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--20-140-100-100-c-100-iso8859-1

/usr/local/bin/xterm7:

  export LANG=el_GR
  xterm -T "xterm el_GR (ISO 8859-7)" -fn -etl-fixed-medium-r-normal--16-160-72-72-c-80-iso8859-7

The export LANG= lines set the locale for the xterm. If you did not include these locales when you first configured your system (or if you aren’t sure), then type

dpkg-reconfigure locales

and make sure both en_GB and el_GR are selected. Do not deselect any locales that show as already selected.

Why does the locale need to be set? Although the basic mapping between keys on the keyboard and the characters they produce is under control of xkb (which we will configure below), the action of the ‘Compose’ key (the right-hand Windows key on my keyboard) is locale-dependent. We want different xterm windows to have different ‘Compose’ key actions, depending on whether they are in Roman or in Greek mode, and this means they have to run in different locales.

Step 3: create a new keyboard mapping

Create a new Greek keyboard map /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/el_GB. This is very similar to the existing Greek map in /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/el, but is modified to reflect the UK keyboard layout. The contents of the new file should be as follows (I have included the original versions of changed lines as comments):

// $XFree86$
//

default partial alphanumeric_keys alternate_group
xkb_symbols "basic" {

    include "el_GB(bare)"

//  key <TLDE> { [],      [ quoteleft,    asciitilde      ]       };
    key <TLDE> { [],      [ quoteleft,    notsign         ]       };
    key <AE01> { [],      [         1,    exclam          ]       };
//  key <AE02> { [],      [         2,    at              ]       };
    key <AE02> { [],      [         2,    quotedbl                ]       };
//  key <AE03> { [],      [         3,    numbersign      ]       };
    key <AE03> { [],      [         3,    sterling        ]       };
    key <AE04> { [],      [         4,    dollar          ]       };
    key <AE05> { [],      [         5,    percent         ]       };
    key <AE06> { [],      [         6,    asciicircum     ]       };
    key <AE07> { [],      [         7,    ampersand       ]       };
    key <AE08> { [],      [         8,    asterisk        ]       };
    key <AE09> { [],      [         9,    parenleft       ]       };
    key <AE10> { [],      [         0,    parenright      ]       };
    key <AE11> { [],      [     minus,    underscore      ]       };
    key <AE12> { [],      [     equal,    plus            ]       };

    key <AD11> { [],      [ bracketleft,  braceleft       ]       };
    key <AD12> { [],      [ bracketright, braceright      ]       };

//  key <AC11> { [],      [ quoteright,   quotedbl        ]       };
    key <AC11> { [],      [ quoteright,   at              ]       };

    key <AB08> { [],      [     comma,    less            ]       };
    key <AB09> { [],      [    period,    greater         ]       };
    key <AB10> { [],      [     slash,    question        ]       };
//  key <BKSL> { [],      [ backslash,    bar             ]       };
    key <BKSL> { [],      [ numbersign,   asciitilde              ]       };

};

hidden partial alphanumeric_keys alternate_group
xkb_symbols "bare" {

    name[Group2] = "ISO8859-7";

    key <AD01> { [], [ semicolon,                 colon           ] };
    key <AD02> { [], [ Greek_finalsmallsigma,     Greek_SIGMA     ] };
    key <AD03> { [], [ Greek_epsilon,             Greek_EPSILON   ] };
    key <AD04> { [], [ Greek_rho,                 Greek_RHO       ] };
    key <AD05> { [], [ Greek_tau,                 Greek_TAU       ] };
    key <AD06> { [], [ Greek_upsilon,             Greek_UPSILON   ] };
    key <AD07> { [], [ Greek_theta,               Greek_THETA     ] };
    key <AD08> { [], [ Greek_iota,                Greek_IOTA      ] };
    key <AD09> { [], [ Greek_omicron,             Greek_OMICRON   ] };
    key <AD10> { [], [ Greek_pi,                  Greek_PI        ] };

    key <AC01> { [], [ Greek_alpha,               Greek_ALPHA     ] };
    key <AC02> { [], [ Greek_sigma,               Greek_SIGMA     ] };
    key <AC03> { [], [ Greek_delta,               Greek_DELTA     ] };
    key <AC04> { [], [ Greek_phi,                 Greek_PHI       ] };
    key <AC05> { [], [ Greek_gamma,               Greek_GAMMA     ] };
    key <AC06> { [], [ Greek_eta,                 Greek_ETA       ] };
    key <AC07> { [], [ Greek_xi,                  Greek_XI        ] };
    key <AC08> { [], [ Greek_kappa,               Greek_KAPPA     ] };
    key <AC09> { [], [ Greek_lamda,               Greek_LAMDA     ] };
    key <AC10> { [], [ dead_acute,                dead_diaeresis  ] };

    key <AB01> { [], [ Greek_zeta,                Greek_ZETA      ] };
    key <AB02> { [], [ Greek_chi,                 Greek_CHI       ] };
    key <AB03> { [], [ Greek_psi,                 Greek_PSI       ] };
    key <AB04> { [], [ Greek_omega,               Greek_OMEGA     ] };
    key <AB05> { [], [ Greek_beta,                Greek_BETA      ] };
    key <AB06> { [], [ Greek_nu,                  Greek_NU        ] };
    key <AB07> { [], [ Greek_mu,                  Greek_MU        ] };

//  key <LSGT> { [], [ guillemotleft,             guillemotright  ] };
    key <LSGT> { [], [ backslash,                 bar     ] };

};

partial alphanumeric_keys alternate_group
xkb_symbols "Sundeadkeys" {

    include "el_GB(basic)"

};

partial alphanumeric_keys alternate_group
xkb_symbols "sundeadkeys" {

    include "el_GB(Sundeadkeys)"

};

partial alphanumeric_keys alternate_group
xkb_symbols "nodeadkeys" {

    include "el_GB(basic)"

    key <AC10> { [], [ semicolon,         colon           ] };

};

Step 4: install the new mapping

You can test the new mapping by typing

setxkbmap -display :0 -keycodes xfree86 -symbols "en_US(pc105)+gb(basic)+el_GB(basic)+group(menu_toggle)" -v

You should find that in an xterm1 window the keyboard works as normal and you can type e.g. <Compose>-a-e and get ‘æ’; and that in an xterm7 window you can switch between Roman and Greek alphabets using the ‘Menu’ key, with the punctuation remaining where you expect it. In Greek mode, typing ;-a should give an accented alpha; typing :-;-i should give an iota with both accent and dieresis, and so on. Colon and semi-colon are on ‘Q’. The open and close guillemot characters (between ‘Z’ and the left shift key on Greek keyboards) can be obtained with Compose-<-< and Compose->-> respectively.

To install the new mapping permanently, edit the keyboard section of the file /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 to remove the lines

  Option          "XkbRules"      "xfree86"
  Option          "XkbModel"      "pc105"
  Option          "XkbLayout"     "gb"

and replace them with

  Option          "XkbKeycodes"   "xfree86"
  Option          "XkbGeometry"   "pc(pc105)"
  Option          "XkbSymbols"    "en_US(pc105)+gb(basic)+el_GB(basic)+group(menu_toggle)"

You will need to restart the X server for this change to take effect.