Different HW keyobard input languages

[magahacka]

Is it possible to hot switch(alt+shift) between a couple of HW keyobard languages? As searching on youtube(adddon) for Russian named videos can only be done via the virtual keyboard and thats a bit frustrating. And i think it would be great for the Ocelot browser , so we could search the web in various languages.

[illki]

To be more exact - it would be very helpful to be able to fast switch hardware keyboard together with on screen virtual keyboard, because currently only virtual onscreen keyboard is working, and hardware keyboards always have English layout

[johnra]

I’m also interested in this feature. Any news on that?

[grahamh]

I’m interested in this, but don’t have a greek/russian/… keyboard to test. I have gone:

sudo apt-get install console-data

and accepted the default ‘Don’t touch keymap’ in the dialogue that comes up. Then I can switch between different western European layouts with:

sudo loadkeys uk|fr|de

but if I try:

sudo loadkeys gr

I don’t get Greek letters, just Latin qwerty. If anyone could test with a non-Latin keyboard, that would be a step forward, and we could then look at switching settings in the GUI. The keyboard has to be directly connected, of course, these settings will not change what you see in a SSH terminal.

[johnra]

I tried that with no luck.
My keyboard is a clone of the Rii i8 mini and I want to change the layout with a key combination like alt+shift on windows.

[grahamh]

Thanks for trying. I need to find the commands to change the layout first, then we can think about a keyboard shortcut for it. What language are you on?

[johnra]

I want to switch between English and Greek

[brianmilnes]

This is still a Default install problem.
Previous version of OSMC on RPi 1 detected USB keyboard with UK layout worked fine
OSMC on RPi3 UK keyboard lost
had to apt-get console-data then apt-get console-setup, choose other, then UK layout to get it to work
(like others, find it strange to find it not working now when it has done OK on all previous versions)

[grahamh]

Odd. It shouldn’t need console-data. I’ve done a few clean installs on RPi2 recently with no probs. I wonder if it’s just a Pi3 thing. OSMC is the same AFAIK.

[brianmilnes]

Oh, last night went back to do some testing on RPi 1 - that is now displaying the same lack of recognition of UK keyboard. This looks then, like a broken recent upgrade to OSMC, as previous iterations worked fine (the whole point of the keyboard being able to type in @ ~ \ characters)!

[grahamh]

You are right. OOTB you get a US keymap (must be the Debian default) so finding \ is indeed a pain from a UK keyboard. We are looking at tying the hardware keyboard layout to the choice you make in Kodi’s virtual keyboard.

[illki]

are there any news?

[sam_nazarko]

It’s being worked on.

Sam

[illki]

any progress?

[sam_nazarko]

See:

[package][mediacenter-osmc] Sync hardware and virtual keyboard layouts

[package][mediacenter-osmc] Support for different hardware keyboard l…

[grahamh]

Is the first pull in staging, now? Can we ask them to test it? (with a manual loadkeys)

[sam_nazarko]

It’s in staging but not built yet.

Will be in the next build.

Sam

[Steve_Van_Hoyweghen]

Hi,

Installed OSMC this week.
I am using a Belgian azerty keyboard, but even if I set everything on OSMC to azerty (French) the physical keyboard defaults to qwerty. I cannot set it to a Belgian soft keyboard.

I looked here /usr/share/keymaps/i386/azerty/ and indeed a Belgian keyboard exists
osmc@osmc1:~$ ls /usr/share/keymaps/i386/azerty/
azerty.kmap.gz be2-latin1.kmap.gz fr-latin1.kmap.gz fr-pc.kmap.gz fr.kmap.gz mac-usb-fr.kmap.gz wangbe.kmap.gz
be-latin1.kmap.gz fr-latin0.kmap.gz fr-latin9.kmap.gz fr-x11.kmap.gz mac-usb-be.kmap.gz mac-usb-it.kmap.gz wo.kmap.gz

So executing

osmc@osmc1:~$ sudo loadkeys be-latin1

make most keys mapped correctly, but not all.
Also Alt Gr not working.
Not perfect but workable

Rebooting, and all is lost …

So can we expect an update soon?
If not, can someone advise me to temporarily patch this without breaking other things?
I would really appreciate because OSMC is really nice, but the keyboard issue is making it a bit awkward when configuring things etc.

FYI

osmc@osmc1:~$ grep Kodi .kodi/temp/kodi.log | head -3
21:33:33.726 T:1958223872 NOTICE: Starting Kodi (17.5). Platform: Linux ARM (Th umb) 32-bit
21:33:33.726 T:1958223872 NOTICE: Using Release Kodi x32 build (version for Ras pberry Pi)
21:33:33.726 T:1958223872 NOTICE: Kodi compiled Oct 29 2017 by GCC 4.9.2 for Li nux ARM (Thumb) 32-bit version 3.16.39 (200743)
osmc@osmc1:~$ grep VERSION_ID /etc/os-release
VERSION_ID=“2017.10-1”

[Tom_Doyle]

Hi,

Running scripts on startup and shutdown

Overview As you come to customise OSMC and tweak it to your liking, you may start writing your own scripts or installing additional software. You may wish to run a script or start a program when OSMC starts, and run a script just before OSMC shuts down. This article expects you to be familiar with accessing the command line in OSMC. If you’re not sure how to do this, you can learn more here. Running a script on startup The rc.local approach Most Linux distributions have a file called rc.loc…

rc.local section will probably be the most helpful.

Thanks Tom.

[grahamh]

@Steve_Van_Hoyweghen

So can we expect an update soon?

Yes. Support for a variety of keyboards will be in the next upgrade. Switching layouts from the GUI is also planned but may not be in the next release as there’s lots of other stuff going on atm. You may still have to run loadkeys at startup in the interim.

If you can describe the differences between a French keyboard and a Belgian one (is there only one standard in Belgium??) we could add it to those available. See /user/share/kodi/system/keyboardlayouts/.