Dvorak keyboard on Xstation or PS2?

[Christopher T. Jewell]

In article <23602 at netcom.COM> I requested pointers to information on
either replacing the keyboard of an IBM Xstation 120 with one which
has a Dvorak layout, or remapping the keyboard of the same Xstation,
attached to an RS/6000 running AIX, by software means.

No one offered a hardware source for Dvorak keyboards, but several
people replied with help on software remapping, summarized below.

The Short Summary: ``man xmodmap'' (for X on any platform); ``man
keycomp'' (specific to RS/6000);

The Long Summary:

Peter Halvorson (ne201ph at prism.gatech.edu) was the first to reply,
pointing out that under X Windows the program xmodmap permits one
to remap the keyboard.  Sure enough, ``man xmodmap'' provided all
the information I needed.

Barbara La Scala (bfls at cain.anu.edu.au) not only pointed to xmodmap,
but also sent along a pair of data files which can be passed to
xmodmap on Suns (probably on the RS/6000 as well, I'm not sure),
one to switch to the Dvorak layout, and the other to switch back
to the Sholes (qwerty) layout.

Charlie Pilzer (clp at beartrack.com) also mentioned xmodmap, and
recommended the O'Reilly books on X, with the answers to my
question starting on page 227 of Volume 3 'X User's Guide'.

Aaron Dailey (bldvm4.iinus1.ibm.com!daileyaj) referred me to the man
page for an IBM-specific program named keycomp, which appears to
provide even more powerful keyboard remapping than xmodmap does.  (If
for some strange reason you wanted holding down the control key and
typing N to generate LineFeed instead of ShiftOut, keycomp could do
it, while xmodmap couldn't.)

Birger Wathne (birger at sdata.no) offered somewhat different X solutions:

>Just make a resource file for you favourite terminal window.
>if you normally use xterm, make a resource file called XTerm somewhere in
>your XAPPLRESDIR or XUSERFILESEARCHPATH. You can remap the keyboard using
>these resources. Talk to some friendly X guru.
>
>You can also have different mappings and have xterm use them by invocing
>it with the -name option. That way "xterm -name Dvorak" would give one
>layout while just xterm could be the ordinary default.
>
>Of course this way you will have to remap for all applications.
>
>You could also try adding these keybindings to your .Xdefaults
>file. It should be possible to make them global there, but i have not tried it.

Jim Roskind (jar at hq.ileaf.com) offered to send me some files which
could lead me towards an X solution, and also mentioned Seasoned
Systems (1-800-334-5531) for a DOS solution.

One final note:  the man page for xmodmap mentions that some windows
may ignore the remapping events provided by xmodmap and keep on
interpreting keystrokes based on the mapping in effect when the
window was created: it does *not* mention that aixterms are among
the windows which don't understand remapping.  At first I was
annoyed by that, but it's actually useful: I can iconify the aixterm
which gets opened at xinit time and leave it in a corner of my
display for the benefit of coworkers who might want to type on my
terminal (perhaps to demonstrate a problem or solution to me) without
having to learn Dvorak typing.

If anyone wants a copy of my xmodmap data file and/or the ones Barbara
sent me, just send me email.

Thank you Aaron, Barbara, Birger, Charlie, Jim, and Peter.  (If
anyone else tried to reply but your email bounced or got dropped on
the floor, thanks for making the effort anyway.)
-- 
Chris   (Christopher T. Jewell)   chrisj at netcom.com    apple!netcom!chrisj