Re: Italian keyboard have only one key wrong in console

On Sat, Mar 08, 2025 at 07:09:57PM +0100, Mirto Silvio Busico wrote:
> Hi all
> 
> I have an italian qwerty keyboard and everything work correctly in KDE 
> Plasma: konsole application sees the correct characters using bash or zsh.
> 
> Strangely activating the console (CTRL+ALT+F3) the only key I cannot 
> type is the dash (-).
> The key is the one near the right shift (the key with the red square 
> around in the attached image) . This key types dash (-) and with shift 
> types underscore (_)
> 
> But on the console it types slash (/) and with shift types underscore (_)
> 
> All the other keys (normal and with shift) type what is expected.
> 
> I'm using Manjaro with KDE and uname says
> 
> *Linux bianco500 6.13.5-2-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue, 04 Mar 
> 2025 13:20:27 +0000 x86_64 GNU/Linux*
> 
> I asked for help on the Manjaro forum (see 
> https://forum.manjaro.org/t/console-italian-keyboard-layout-with-one-key-wrong/175166 
> )
> 
> But from what I understant it seems more a bug than a misconfiguration.
> 
> What can I do?
> 

The kbd configures the console in the kernel. Once the keymap and font
have been configured, the further work of handling keyboard events lies
with the kernel.

The Xorg/Wayalnd clients uses a different way to handle keyboard input.
Clients uses the xkb library, to which raw keyboard input is passed. The
xkb has its own keymaps and does not use keymaps from the kernel in any
way.

So these are completely different systems for handling keyboard events.

Some distributions (such as Debian) generate kernel keymaps from keymaps
from xkb. But there are stricter restrictions in the kernel and xkb
keymaps can't just be used. I have a branch in which I'm trying to convert
xkb keymap to kernel keymap, but it needs more work and testing.

You can use the debian solution and try to generate the keymap for the
kernel from xkb.

https://salsa.debian.org/installer-team/console-setup

-- 
Rgrds, legion