This is from 5littlejoe5:

I am trying to ptrpare a box for Spanish speaking friends, but only have the American style key board. What I want is the American style kbd map with"dead keys" that will enable to type the Spanish letters. But I also want as much of the Spanish langauge as possible in the menus and programs. AS an added bonus it would be nice if I could switch between that"dead key" kbd map and the standard English (American) kbd map. I'm somewhat mistified about how to set it up. One of the problems is I really have no idea which of those coded keyboard choices does what I want to do . What (for instance does en_us.iso88591 mean. or any of those others? I find some technical stuff on the internet about it, but no plain answers for the likes of me. Can you help me in plain English?

Install antiX choosing the Spanish locale (F3 in the CD menu). Then you have both the Spanish keyboard (default) and the normal US keyboard. You toggle between them by pressing Alt left + Shift.
The only thing you'll have to do is to replace the Spanish keyboard for the US international keyboard in /etc/default/keyboard so you have both the standard US and the one with accents.
Let's say you have this: Then you change for this I didn't test it here but I think it's like that.

To edit that file, open up the menu, click on Run..., enter the command on the blank field check the box for 'Run as root', enter your password when prompted for, edit the file as in the above post, save it and reboot the computer for it to load the new keyboard setup.

If you just want to test if us-international keymap is the one you want, you can set it on-the-fly with the command Only that doesn't persist after a reboot.

Well your last paragraph here got me to the"switchable" keyboard. en and en-intl. Problem is everything is still in English. When it boots, I don't get that first graphic screen with the choice on it to install in Spanish. (Maybe a flaw in my CD mechanism???) At any rate, If I knew how that changes the command line, or what the command line should be, I probably could edit the command line to get it to switdh over to Spanish for the install, and then install agin, but this time in Spanish.

secipolla wrote:Install antiX choosing the Spanish locale (F3 in the CD menu). Then you have both the Spanish keyboard (default) and the normal US keyboard. You toggle between them by pressing Alt left + Shift.
The only thing you'll have to do is to replace the Spanish keyboard for the US international keyboard in /etc/default/keyboard so you have both the standard US and the one with accents.
Let's say you have this:

Code: Select all

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us,es"
XKBVARIANT=","
XKBOPTIONS="grp:alt_shift_toggle,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp,grp_led:scroll"

Then you change for this

Code: Select all

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us,us"
XKBVARIANT=",intl"
XKBOPTIONS="grp:alt_shift_toggle,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp,grp_led:scroll"

I didn't test it here but I think it's like that.

As you have installed antiX, what you could do is:

1. Copy over (as root) the files from /usr/share/antiX/localisation/es/local-bin to /usr/local/bin
2. As user, copy the files from /usr/share/antiX/localisation/es/fluxbox to ~/./fluxbox and rename menu-es to menu.
3. As user, copy the files from /usr/share/antiX/localisation/es/icewm to ~/./icewm and rename menu-es to menu

Make sure that the files in ~/.fluxbox and ~/.icewm are owned by user.

4. As root, dpkg-reconfigure locales and choose Spanish if you wan that as the default language when opening apps.
5. For system Spanish edit /etc/profile.

Add this line add the bottom (or edit if en is there)

export LANG=es_ES.UTF-8

Big problem solved. Thanks! Now trying to set xorg.conf for my monitor

Finally got this system set up with dual language support (at least the"dead key support for the Mexican keyboard, and the ability to switch to the US keyboard. Thanks so much!

I had to re-install Mepis 8.5 to do it, and in order to get that first Graphics screen booting up from the CD, I had to dump my old SiS video card, and install a Trident that I had here.

But now: Hal isn't recognizing my Monitor, which (I guess)means I'll have to do some editing on xorg.conf. (I think I'm getting a resolution of 320x240 The desktop doesn't look too bad, but any program window is way too big to fit the screen.)

I've tried several edits, with the result that I get booted to a prompt instead of the desktop.

The monitor is Nec Multisync XE21 (75 pounds, 20 inch ctr). Here are the relevant specs:

Synchronizatio Horizontal: 31.0 KHz to 69 KHz;
Vertical: 55 Hz to 120 Hz;
n Range
(Automatic):
Active Display Horizontal: 390mm, 15.4"
Vertical: 293mm, 11.5"

Seems that the system is fine with the Trident card, but just can't recognize this old monitor. So how do I identify this monitor in a way that xorg.conf will find acceptable?