OLPC Khmer Keyboard

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OLPC keyboard layouts

Instructions for setting up keyboard switching in Terminal are on the Customizing NAND images page. On bilingual XOs, the multiplication/division key is replaced with a keyboard switching key.

Changing the language of the keyboard is independent of changing the language currently displayed. The language currently displayed can be changed by using the Language section of the Sugar Control Panel.

Membrane keyboard layouts

English (US international); Spanish (Latin America); Portuguese (Brazilian); Amharic (Ethiopic); Arabic; Nigerian (Igbo, Hausa, Yoruba); French; Thai; Urdu; Cyrillic (Russian); Turkish; Nepali; Mongolian; Kazakh; Devanagari; Uzbek; Pashto; Dari; Armenian; Khmer; Pulaar; Italian; Kreyòl; German; Chinese (Simplified); OLPC AZERTY

Non-membrane keyboard layouts

Starting with the XO-1.5 HS ("High School") edition, the XO laptop has a traditional (non-membrane) keyboard available as an option: English (US International); Spanish (Latin America);

Blank Keyboard Artwork

Artwork defining the inner dimensions of the membrane keyboard is available here: keyboard-blank.svg

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NB: Please be aware that changes to this keyboard are in discussion. See this localization list thread. cjl 04:15, 16 October 2008 (UTC). The proposed new keyboard is shown as well as the current keyboard. Kimquirk 01:46, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Khmer keyboard layout proposal (new)

Khmer keyboard layout (current)

OLPC section of the XKB symbol file

For version 13.2.5 of the XO software, to use the Khmer layout along with the standard US layout, you can edit the /etc/sysconfig/keyboard file as follows:

The original contents of the file look like this:

 XKBMODEL="olpc"
 XKBLAYOUT="us"
 XKBVARIANT="olpc"

You need to edit the file (eg with sudo vi ...) so that it looks like this:

 XKBMODEL="olpc"
 XKBLAYOUT="us,kh"
 XKBVARIANT="olpc2,olpc"
 

Once you have edited and saved the file you need to restart the XO. Once you have restarted the XO and are using an application in Sugar, to change the keyboard from US to Kh, you press the "Multiply/Divide" key (far right, second row from bottom).

So if you are using the Write application in Sugar, you can switch between the character sets by pressing the "Multiply/Divide" key as you enter characters in the document.

Limitations

- This only works in the Sugar applications, not in Gnome applications.

- On XO-1.75 and XO-4 the keyboard layout is different (non-membrane keyboard) and there is no "Multiply/Divide" key.

Earlier Releases

For earlier XO software releases try the following:

To use the XKB Khmer layout along with US layout, you may need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf. This will make "us" the first and "kh" a second layout:

XkbLayout "us,kh"
XkbVariant "olpc2,olpc"

partial default alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "olpc" {
    include "kh(basic)"
    
// Contact Walter@laptop.org

    key <AE01> { [ 0x10017e1,		0x100200c,		exclam, 	0x10017f1	] };
    key <AE03> { [ 0x10017e3,		0x10017d1,		quotedbl, 	0x10017f3	] };
    key <AE05> { [ 0x10017e5,		EuroSign,		percent, 	0x10017f5	] };
    key <AE12> { [ 0x10017b2,		0x10017ce,		equal, 	 	voidsymbol	] };
    key <AC10> { [ 0x10017be,		0x10017c8,		0x10017d6, 	0x10019f5	] };

   //language key
   include "group(olpc)"
};