Neo2 issues on xubuntu

✍️ Written on 2021-10-21 in 382 words. Part of digital-typesetting Unicode

Motivation

I am a Neo2 user. But xubuntu 20.04 has some issues in the Neo2 definition. I wanted to document keys, that do not work.

Notational remarks

I am using the key specifiers of XKB here. key <AB03> refers to the row containing letter m (row A has the spacebar, row B has letter m, etc.) and to column 3 (counted from left zero-indexed).

Issues

For all characters mentioned, no action was recognized instead of printing the specified character:

  • On layer 4 …

    • key <AB04> should be some unknown character (I don’t understand its Neo2 definition)

  • On layer 5 …

    • key <AB03> should be U+03F5 GREEK LUNATE EPSILON SYMBOL

    • key <AD12> should be some unknown character (I don’t understand its Neo2 definition)

    • key <AE12> should be some unknown character (I don’t understand its Neo2 definition)

  • On layer 6 …

    • key <AD11> should be U+26AC MEDIUM SMALL WHITE CIRCLE

    • key <AD06> should be U+00D7 MULTIPLICATION SIGN

    • key <AD05> should be U+03A9 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER OMEGA

    • key <AC05> should be U+2208 ELEMENT OF

    • key <AC06> should be U+03A3 GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SIGMA

    • key <AC11> should be U+0x2207 NABLA

Documentation

Looking at the specification sheets, I also initially struggled to understand the following characters, FTR:

  • Key AB02 layer 4 key <AB02> denotes the escape key (usually top-left key)

  • Key AB06 layer 4 key <AB06> switches between insertion and replace mode

Conclusion

This list might allow me in the future to fix the keyboard layout. Recognize that (at least) two files define the keyboard layout:

  • /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/de specifies the layout

  • /usr/include/X11/keysymdef.h defines the key names