[XeTeX] virtual keyboard question

David Perry hospes.primus at verizon.net
Sun Sep 19 06:10:30 CEST 2010


On Windows (which seems to be the request, not Linux), your friend needs 
to enable all the languages in which he wants to type using the Control 
Panel, associating a keyboard with each.  He should also enable the 
option to cycle through the available keyboards using ALT-LEFT SHIFT 
(that's more efficient that using the icon in the system tray, although 
that option certainly works too).

There's a page on Microsoft's web site where one can get a graphic 
showing the layout for each keyboard shipped with Windows; the graphics 
can be copied and pasted into a document and printed for reference.  (I 
don't have the URL at hand but a google search will locate it.)  There 
is also an on-screen keyboard that can be turned on in the Ease of 
Access portion of Control Panel. This is designed mainly for people who 
have trouble typing on a physical keyboard but can also serve simply as 
a reference for an unfamiliar layout.

> different languages aka. fonts
Languages and fonts are different (although interconnected) issues.  A 
single font may support several scripts.  Linux Libertine, e.g., has 
Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Hebrew; Times New Roman has these and more, 
including (I think) Arabic.  Other fonts support only one or two 
scripts.  Windows comes with quite a wide selection, with more recent 
versions (Vista and 7) having the best support.  Note that on Win7, 
fonts that are designed to support a single script are grayed out if 
that script is not enabled in the Control Panel.

Also, in Word and OpenOffice Writer, one must enable the use of complex 
scripts (Arabic, Devanagari, etc.) specifically or they won't work.

David



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