[Techtalk] Need Suggestions: How To Multi-Language ?

[Figaro]

Thank you so much.
I've not tried anything such as this before, so one admitts to being
muddled at the potential to screw up the system which is essential for
daily CAD/SIM work.

Kathryn Andersen wrote:
> On Sun, Apr 13, 2008 at 10:53:48PM +0100, Figaro wrote:
>> I am hoping there may be a way to run several instances of oo.org. and
>> gnome0term., or konsole and emacs with different language and keyboard
>> setups from within my existing Debian SID machine.
>>
>> My thinking is that perhaps a way would be to create several new users
>> each with a locale set to one of the languages, but this would not (as
>> far as I understand) allow me to run them concurrently as individual
>> x-sessions enabling one to simply ctrl-alt-F?(something) between
>> them..or would it?
> 
> Yes, you can run multiple X-sessions at once, each one logged in as a
> different user.
> I can think of a couple of different ways that this could be done.
> 
> A. Don't use a graphical login at all.  That is, turn off gdm/kdm/xdm
> (whichever one you're using).
> Log in to the console as User A, start X by hand with xinit or startx.
> Ctrl-Alt-F2; log in to this next console as User B;
> start X by hand with display set to :1.0 rather than :0.0
Okay. I could just ctrl-atl-F2; login then issue $startx; then choose
the wm environment (I usually use e-17 or fluxbox). in theory this
should allow one to have the original en_US.utf8 on F7 (:0.0),
uk_UA.utf8 on F8 (:1.0), ko_KR.ytf8 on F9 (:2.0).
Is this correct?

> 
> Switch between them with Ctrl-Alt-F7 and Ctrl-Alt-F8
>

Now where to start to config. the individual user accounts. I assume
that one can issue $ update-locale and select the specific one as that
user, then open OO.org and config. it from the options menus etc..
I'll need to check out the keyboard mapping  (likely using clear key
overlays for my stock SGI qwerty_US keyboard).

> B.  Use qingy rather than gdm/kdm/xdm as your login manager.
> http://qingy.sourceforge.net/
> 

I'll certainly check this out. I have to use a commercial X-server (XiG
Accelerated-X Platinum Work Station X-server) due to special CAD/SIM
work and OpenGL work... so there may be some hurdles to get the
configuration set up correctly.. but should not be "un-doable".


> This could be a little trickier to set up, as it requires you to get the
> framebuffer working.  But once you have it set up, it's really nifty.
> With qingy, you can log in either to a straight terminal, or to X, and
> you can do so multiple times -- it takes care of the X-display stuff for
> you.  And you would switch between the two logins with Ctrl-Alt-F1 and
> Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or whichever consoles you used to log in at).
> 
> Kathryn Andersen


matthew