International Language Environments Guide

Keyboard Support in the Solaris 9 Product

Solaris recognizes and supports various keyboards with different key layouts made for specific regions, and layout support for both Sun SPARC and Intel Architecture (IA) platforms. Solaris 9 supports the regional keyboards listed in the following table:

Table 3–14 Support for Regional Keyboards


Region	Country	Sun Keyboard (Type 4/5/5c)	Sun Keyboard (Type 6)	PC Keyboard
Asia	Japan	X	X	X
	Korea	X	X	X
	Taiwan	X	X	X
Europe	Belgium	X	X	X
	Czech Republic	X		X
	Denmark	X	X	X
	Finland		X
	France	X	X	X
	Germany	X	X	X
	Great Britain	X	X	X
	Greece	X		X
	Hungary	X		X
	Italy	X	X	X
	Latvia	X		X
	Lithuania	X		X
	The Netherlands	X	X	X
	Norway	X	X	X
	Poland	X		X
	Portugal	X	X	X
	Russia	X	X	X
	Spain	X	X	X
	Sweden	X	X	X
	Switzerland (French)	X	X	X
	Switzerland (German)	X	X	X
	Turkey	X	X	X
America	Canada (French)	X	X	X
	Latin America (Spanish)	X
	U.S.A.	X	X	X
Middle East	Arabic	X	X

For regions with keyboard layouts that conform to the International Standard, such as China, use the keyboard layout support provided for the U.S.A. to input the locale's characters. The underlying keyboard mappings are identical. Some countries, like Japan, Turkey, and Switzerland have multiple keyboards, because multiple languages are being used, or because multiple keyboard layouts exist.

Sun Type 4, 5, and 5c keyboards use Sun I/O interfaces through a Mini DIN 8–pin connection. Sun Type 6 keyboards have two versions of interfaces:

Sun I/O through a Mini DIN 8–pin connection
USB

Sun keyboard types are printed on the back of each Sun keyboard.

PC keyboards use various interfaces, such as PS/2 or USB, for example.

Changing Between Keyboards on SPARC Systems

Users can change keyboard layouts in the Solaris product by using the DIP switch settings under most of Sun Type 4, 5 and 5c keyboards. A list of keyboard type, names and corresponding layout ids that can be used for the DIP switch settings is in the /usr/openwin/share/etc/keytables/keytable.map file.

Note –

Users cannot change the layouts of Type 6 keyboards because there are no DIP switches at the back of the keyboards. Some Type 5 and 5c keyboards, for instance, U.S.A., U.S.A./UNIX, and Japanese keyboards have jumpers instead of DIP switches. There are no utilities or tools for both SPARC and IA platforms (apart from a standard UNIX tool, like xmodmap(1)) bundled into the Solaris 9 operating environment for switching keyboards.

The following is a table of the layout id values for Type 4, 5, and 5c keyboards. (1 = switch up, 0 = switch down).

Table 3–15 Layouts for Type 4, 5, and 5c Keyboards


DIP Switch	Keyboard (Keytable file)	Setting in Binary
0	U.S.A. (`US4.kt`)	000000
1	U.S.A. (`US4.kt`)	000001
2	Belgium (`FranceBelg4.kt`)	000010
3	Canada (`Canada4.kt`)	000011
4	Denmark (`Denmark4.kt`)	000100
5	Germany (`Germany4.kt`)	000101
6	Italy (`Italy4.kt`)	000110
7	The Netherlands (`Netherland4.kt`)	000111
8	Norway (`Norway4.kt`)	001000
9	Portugal `(Portugal4.kt`)	001001
10 (0x0a)	Latin America/Spanish (`SpainLatAm4.kt`)	001010
11 (ox0b)	Sweden (`SwedenFin4.kt`)	001011
12 (0x0c)	Switzerland/French (`Switzer_Fr4.kt`)	001100
13 (0x0d)	Switzerland/German (`Switzer_Ge4.kt`)	001101
14 (0x0e)	Great Britain (`UK4.kt`)	001110
16 (0x10)	Korea (`Korea4.kt`)	010000
17 (0x11)	Taiwan (`Taiwan4.kt`)	010001
33 (0x21)	U.S.A. (`US5.kt`)	100001
34 (0x22)	U.S.A./UNIX (`US_UNIX5.kt`)	100010
35 (0x23)	France (`France5.kt`)	100011
36 (0x24)	Denmark (`Denmark5.kt`)	100100
37 (0x25)	Germany (`Germany5.kt`)	100101
38 (0x26)	Italy (`Italy5.kt`)	100110
39 (0x27)	The Netherlands (`Netherland5.kt`)	100111
40 (0x28)	Norway (`Norway5.kt`)	101000
41 (0x29)	Portugal (`Portugal5.kt`)	101001
42 (0x2a)	Spain (`Spain5.kt`)	101010
43 (0x2b)	Sweden (`Sweden5.kt`)	101011
44 (0x2c)	Switzerland/French (`Switzer_Fr5.kt`)	101101
45 (0x2d)	Switzerland/German (`Switzer_Ge5.kt`)	101110
46 (0x2e)	Great Britain (`UK5.kt`)	101111
47 (0x2f)	Korea (`Korea5.kt`)	101111
48 (0x30)	Taiwan (`Taiwan5.kt`)	110000
49 (0x31)	Japan (`Japan5.kt`)	110001
50 (0x32), see also 63 (0x3f)	Canada/French (`Canada_Fr5.kt`)	110010
51 0(x33)	Hungary (`Hungary5.kt`)	110011
52 (0x34	Poland (`Poland5.kt`)	110100
53 (0x35)	Czech (`Czech5.kt`)	110101
54 (0x36)	Russia (`Russia5.kt`)	110110
55 (0x37)	Latvia (`Latvia5.kt`)	110111
56 (0x38) see also 62 (0x3e)	Turkey-Q5 (`TurkeyQ5.kt`)	111000
57 (0x39)	Greece (`Greece5.kt`)	111001
58 (0x3a)	Arabic (`Arabic5.kt`)	111011
59 (0x3b)	Lithuania (`Lithuania5.kt`)	111010
60 (0x3c)	Belgium (`Belgian5.kt`)	111100
62 (0x3e)	Turkey-F5 (`TurkeyF5.kt`)	111110
63 (0x3f)	Canada/French (`Canada_Fr5_TBITS5.kt`)	111111

Keytable file names with 4 are for a Type 4 keyboard. Keytable file names with 5 are for a Type 5 keyboard.

Changing the layout from one keyboard layout to another layout (Czech for example), requires the following steps:

Find out the correct DIP switch id (or layout id) either from the table or from the /usr/openwin/share/etc/keytables/keytable.mp file. The layout id value in the keytable.mp file is a decimal value.

For Czech, the layout id is 53 in decimal (0x35 in hexadecimal).
Convert the layout id to binary, or use a proper “Setting in Binary” value from the column in the above table. For base conversion, calculator utilities such as dtcalc(1) may be used.

The correct binary value for the Czech keyboard is 110101.
Become superuser. Shut down and power off the system.
Change the DIP switch settings at the back of the keyboard by using the binary value in step 2.

The first DIP switch is on your left. Move the switch up for “1” and down for “0”.

The Czech keyboard binary value 110101, corresponds to: up up down up down up.
Power on and boot the system for use.

Note –

Unlike Type 4 keyboards, Type 5 and 5c keyboards have only five DIP switches. For the Type 5 and 5c keyboards, disregard the first binary digit. For the Czech Type 5c keyboard, for example, the correct DIP switch settings are “Up Down Up Down Up”, using only the last five digits from 10101.

Changing Between Keyboards on Intel Systems

On Intel architecture systems, a keyboard is selected during the kdmconfig(1M) part of the installation. To change this at any time after installation, first exit your GUI desktop environment to the command-line mode. As superuser, type kdmconfig to run the program. Follow the instructions to get the desired keyboard layout.