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 <!ENTITY % English "INCLUDE" > <!-- change language only here -->
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 <article id="keyboard" lang="&language;">
 <title>Keyboard</title>
 <articleinfo>
 
 <authorgroup>
 <author>&Mike.McBride; &Mike.McBride.mail;</author>
 <author>&Anne-Marie.Mahfouf; &Anne-Marie.Mahfouf.mail;</author>
 <!-- TRANS:ROLES_OF_TRANSLATORS -->
 </authorgroup>
 
 <date>2020-12-05</date>
 <releaseinfo>Plasma 5.21</releaseinfo>
 
 <keywordset>
 <keyword>KDE</keyword>
 <keyword>Plasma</keyword>
 <keyword>System Settings</keyword>
 <keyword>keyboard</keyword>
 </keywordset>
 </articleinfo>
 
 <para>This module allows you to choose how your keyboard works.</para>
 
 <para>There are three tabs in this module.</para>
 
 <sect1 id="hardware">
 <title>The Hardware tab</title>
 <para>The actual effect of setting these options depends upon the
 features provided by your keyboard hardware and the X server on which
 &plasma; is running.  As an example, you may find that changing the key
 click volume has no effect because that feature is not available on your
 system. </para>
 
 <variablelist>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Keyboard model:</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>
 Here you can set your keyboard model. This setting is independent of your
 keyboard layout and refers to the &quot;hardware&quot; model, &ie; the way your
 keyboard is manufactured. Modern keyboards that come with your computer usually
 have two extra keys and are referred to as &quot;104-key&quot; models, which is
 probably what you want if you do not know what kind of keyboard you have.
 </para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>NumLock on Plasma Startup</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>You can choose to either always <guilabel>Turn on</guilabel> or
 <guilabel>Turn off</guilabel> the NumLock when &plasma; starts, or you can
 choose to have &plasma; leave NumLock at whatever it was set to before &plasma;
 started up.</para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>When a key is held:</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>It is possible to select one of the tree options here, namely</para>
 <variablelist>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Show accented and similar characters</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>If this option is selected, when a key is held down while entering text, a popup is shown which lets one choose between various accented forms of the character.</para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Do nothing</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>This option allows you to turn off any activities when you pressing and holding down the keys.</para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Repeat the key</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>When this option is selected, pressing and holding down a key
 emits the same character repeatedly until the key is released.  Pressing
 and holding the key will have the same effect as pressing it multiple
 times in succession.</para>
 <tip><para> Almost all users will want to have this option enabled, because it
 makes navigating through documents with the arrow keys significantly
 easier. </para></tip>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 </variablelist>
 
 <variablelist>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Delay</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>This option allows you to set the delay after which a pressed
 key will start generating keycodes.</para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Rate</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>This option allows you to set the rate at which keycodes are
 generated while a key is pressed.</para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 </variablelist>
 
 <para>Type some characters into the <guilabel>Test area</guilabel> text box to
 verify the settings.</para>
 <para>Many computers won't support this function.</para>
 
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 
 </variablelist>
 </sect1>
 
 <sect1 id="layouts">
 <title>The Layouts tab</title>
 <para>This tab lets you choose what keyboard layouts you want to use, what
 indicator you want in the system tray, how you want to switch and which
 shortcuts you will use.</para>
 
 <variablelist>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Layout Indicator</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>You can choose to <guilabel>Show layout indicator</guilabel>
 which will show the language iso name in the system tray. You can choose to
 show the indicator even if you have a single layout enabled
 and you can show the language flag instead of only the ISO code by checking
 <guilabel>Show flag</guilabel>.</para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Switching Policy</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>If you select <guilabel>Application</guilabel> or
 <guilabel>Window</guilabel> switching policy, changing the keyboard layout will
 only affect the current application or window. <guilabel>Global</guilabel> will
 change the keyboard layout globally and <guilabel>Desktop</guilabel> will change
 it only for the current virtual desktop.
 </para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Shortcuts for Switching Layout</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para><guilabel>Main shortcuts</guilabel> is a shortcut for switching
 layouts which is handled by X.org. <guilabel>3rd level shortcuts</guilabel> is a
 shortcut for switching to a third level of the active layout (if it has one)
 which is handled by X.org. It allows modifier-only shortcuts.
 <guilabel>Alternative shortcut</guilabel> is a shortcut for switching layouts
 which is handled by &plasma;. It does not support modifier-only shortcuts and also
 may not work in some situations (&eg; if popup is active or from screensaver).
 </para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Configure layouts</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>If you check <guilabel>Configure layouts</guilabel> you will be able to
 add and remove keyboard layouts in order to switch between them when you need.
 </para>
 <para>Clicking on <guibutton>Add</guibutton> will open a dialog where you
 will be able to choose the new keyboard layout you want to add as well as its
 variant, label and shortcut.
 </para>
 <para>
 The list of layouts right to the <guilabel>Layout</guilabel> label in the
 <guilabel>Add Layout</guilabel> dialog can be narrowed down using
 <guilabel>Limit selection by language</guilabel> drop-down list. You
 can click on <guibutton>Preview</guibutton> button to preview chosen layout
 in a separate window.
 </para>
 <para>You can order the layouts with the up and down buttons, the top one being
 the default one.
 </para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 <varlistentry>
 <term><guilabel>Spare layouts</guilabel></term>
 <listitem>
 <para>This option can be enabled only if you have more than two layouts.</para>
 <para>Spare layouts allow to toggle between small number of layouts easily
 while keeping more layouts handy close by. For example you might use 3
 languages: English, Ukrainian and German but first two are used often
 and third one just occasionally. In this case you can configure first
 two as main layouts (setting <guilabel>Main layout count</guilabel>: 2)
 and German one as spare one - when you toggle with
 keyboard and left mouse button the switch will happen between main
 layouts only but you can always choose 3rd layout with context menu.</para>
 <para>When spare layout is chosen it replaces the last main layout (this is
 done for technical reasons, usually global shortcuts work based on the
 1st active layout so it's more reliable to preserve the 1st layout when
 allowing to activate spare layouts).</para>
 <!-- context menu ?-->
 <para>As X.org only allows to have 4 layouts to switch <quote>spare layouts</quote> feature
 also allows to overcome this limitation: user can have up to 4 main
 layouts (managed by X.org) but 4 more spare layouts allowed (managed by
 layout switcher). Thus user can conveniently work with up to total of 8
 layouts (although the 4 spare layouts limit can be raised in the future).
 </para>
 </listitem>
 </varlistentry>
 </variablelist>
 
 </sect1>
 
 <sect1 id="advanced">
 <title>The Advanced tab</title>
 <para>In this tab, if you check <guilabel>Configure keyboard options</guilabel>
 you will then be able to set a few options regarding some special keys settings. You can
 expand these options by clicking on the &gt; symbol on the left of the option
 then you choose your setting in the expanded list.</para>
 <para>This is a &GUI; to help creating custom keyboard layouts for &X11; using XKB.
 </para>
 <para>For more information please refer to the <emphasis>Links</emphasis> section on the
 <ulink url="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XKeyboardConfig">XKeyboardConfig
 page on freedesktop.org</ulink>.
 </para>
 </sect1>
 </article>