Lately I have taken to studying ancient languages, such as Paleo Hebrew, Proto Canaanite, LinearB and LinearA. For now, I want to create a keyboard map for Proto Canaanite. I figure I can start with Hebrew. Use Hebrew as the skeleton and just change the fonts. Let me show you why. This chart should help. http://www.ancient-hebrew.org/files/28_alphabetchart.gif
The “Early” is the Proto Canaanite. The “Middle” is Paleo Hebrew, and “Late” is like modern Hebrew.
Looks nice. I assume all those characters can be found in Unicode.
But I failed to identify your question.
I had no doubt about Hebrew being defined in Unicode (see http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0590.pdf and http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFB00.pdf)
But I can not find immediatly the ancient ones. Allthough Phoenician (at http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U10900.pdf comes very near your “Middle” column.
Nice and interesting subject!
But again, what is your question in this Help forum?
My question, what I need help with is creating a keyboard map. I want to type in Middle and Early. I can’t seem to be able to create a Hebrew keyboard layout, let alone replace the Hebrew fonts with Early and Middle.
I have no idea what you already have read, found, tried or done. There are of course Hewbrew keyboards on the market. And Mapping on Latin ones. I found e.g. this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hebrew_keyboard which looks to me as a good starting point.
And then of course when you replace the glyphs of your Hewbrew fonts with the wanted ones, it will show/print them instead of Hebrew. But I have no idea if somebody did alread create those glyphs.
Google, google, google?
Aren’t there any “pressure groups” that want these alphabets incorporated in Unicode? That would at least give them a proper place and I have no doubt glyphs would be created (either free or not).
No. No. Not hardware, my friend. A keyboard “layout” a keyboard “map”. I posted about it on Facebook for my Windows friends. I have read an Arch howto, although I don’t quite get it. The glyphs are already done. It’s actually called pictographic.
I hope I haven’t scared everyone off. At this point, I can’t even seem to make a regular Hebrew keyboard map. Something is missing here.
I was not realy talking hardware I assume.A keyboard gives only keyboard codes when a key (combination) is hit. The keyboard mapping translates that into the character values defined in the mapping. The only hardware comes into play IMHO is when you start putting stickers with the characters to the keys.
BTW in KDE when you go to System Settings > Hardware > Input Devices > Keyboard and then the tab Mappings (or similar, I have a Dutch translation here), I am able to add Mappings. And when I restrict the language to Hebrew, there are still 5 possibilities.
OK cool. I was going via YaST. I’ll try KDE System Settings.
OK, so I checked them out. That will at least give me the skeleton or framework to work with, now just gotta get it to type the nice characters above. 
Which is why I started this thread in the first place. In other distros I can get this far, but I am stumped at this point.
I assume you forgot that Unix/Linux is a multi-user system. Thus many users can be loged in at the same time or at different times. You can not centraly (system/YaST) decide what keyboard they have or what mapping they want to use at any moment. At the most you can provide a default and a set of easy to switch to ones. But the individual user decides here. Thus KDE (or any other user interface) is the place.
Umm, no. I didn’t forget. It’s just I am the only user. There is just me. Since the other distros didn’t have YaST I figured that this could be done in YaST. I was wrong. So how do I get it to type the characters that I want?
It does not matter that you think you are the only user on the system. The system does not “know” that you think so. It still is a multu-user system with all the pros and cons of it.
The fact that people think there is bit one user, lets them often forget they have a multi-user system.
And in the end you haven’t a single user system. In my system:
henk@boven:~> wc -l /etc/passwd
35 /etc/passwd
henk@boven:~>
there are 35 users configured (and only three or four were added by me). And even if one never looks there, most people know that there is at least one other user: root.
The above may be a bit too pedantic, but I often see people here looking for configuration possibilities/file in completely the wrong place because they never spent any thoughts about the consequences of having a multi-user system.
Let us leave this hobbyhorse of mine and go back to your Hebrew and forerunners.
I still need to know how to type with those characters that I showed in my initial post. I haven’t really forgotten that Linux is a multiuser system, my friend, my I am readjusting to is the openSUSE way. In either case it can be done from KDE system settings. So now that that horse is beaten to death, how can I type in Paleo Hebrew or Proto-Canaanite? I only need someone to help me for one of them. From there I’ll be able to add the other myself and even go on to LinearB and LinearA (LinearB and LinearA are the precursors to Greek with LinearA being the older of the two). I appreciate the reminder of the multi user system. It’s a nice rabbit trail to go down. It just doesn’t help me in this issue.
BTW, my system has 45 users. 
I am not sure that I can follow you.
Are you now able to type Hebrew? That means (if I am correct) that when you type (e.g. when editing a file) the key that is mapped to a Hewbrew Aleph, you then get the UTF-8 encoding of U+05D0 in that file.
(And that, will show as a א when a fitting font is available).
But when you want to enter an Early Semitic “Horse head”, you need a keyboard mapping between a key (maybe the same you used for א ) and an Unicode point that does not exist at the time. In other words, there is until now no binary representation of that character defined. Thus how can you create a table where only the firsts column (the keyboard codes) are known, but the second column (the characters they must be translated into) is unknown?
Typing in Hebrew has never been the issue. The issue is typing in Proto Canaanite or Paleo Hebrew. The Ox head means the same thing as א UTF-8 encoding of U+05D0 which is the modern aleph.
From poking around in YaST /etc/sysconfig Editor I stumbled upon KEYTABLE, which lead me to here; /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/ This is quite probably what I’m after. But I still don’t know what to do. I’ll keep poking around. If anyone has an idea, please let me know.
This is from the il.heb.map
# From Oded S. Resnik
charset "iso-8859-8"
keymaps 0-6,8,12
include "linux-with-alt-and-altgr"
strings as usual
keycode 1 = Escape Escape Escape Escape
alt keycode 1 = Meta_Escape
keycode 2 = one exclam one exclam
alt keycode 2 = Meta_one
keycode 3 = two at two at nul nul
alt keycode 3 = Meta_two
keycode 4 = three numbersign three numbersign
control keycode 4 = Escape
alt keycode 4 = Meta_three
keycode 5 = four dollar four dollar
control keycode 5 = Control_backslash
alt keycode 5 = Meta_four
keycode 6 = five percent five percent
control keycode 6 = Control_bracketright
alt keycode 6 = Meta_five
keycode 7 = six asciicircum six asciicircum
control keycode 7 = Control_asciicircum
alt keycode 7 = Meta_six
keycode 8 = seven ampersand seven ampersand
control keycode 8 = Control_underscore
alt keycode 8 = Meta_seven
keycode 9 = eight asterisk eight asterisk Delete
alt keycode 9 = Meta_eight
keycode 10 = nine parenleft nine parenright
alt keycode 10 = Meta_nine
keycode 11 = zero parenright zero parenleft
alt keycode 11 = Meta_zero
keycode 12 = minus underscore minus underscore Control_underscore Control_underscore
alt keycode 12 = Meta_minus
keycode 13 = equal plus equal plus
alt keycode 13 = Meta_equal
keycode 14 = Delete Delete Delete Delete
alt keycode 14 = Meta_Delete
keycode 15 = Tab Meta_Tab Tab Tab
alt keycode 15 = Meta_Tab
keycode 16 = +q +Q slash slash Control_q Control_q Control_q Control_q
keycode 17 = +w +W apostrophe apostrophe Control_w Control_w Control_w Control_w
keycode 18 = +e +E qof qof Control_e Control_e Control_e Control_e
keycode 19 = +r +R resh resh Control_r Control_r Control_r Control_r
keycode 20 = +t +T alef alef Control_t Control_t Control_t Control_t
keycode 21 = +y +Y tet tet Control_y Control_y Control_y Control_y
keycode 22 = +u +U vav vav Control_u Control_u Control_u Control_u
keycode 23 = +i +I finalnun finalnun Tab Tab Tab Tab
keycode 24 = +o +O finalmem finalmem Control_o Control_o Control_o Control_o
keycode 25 = +p +P pe pe Control_p Control_p Control_p Control_p
keycode 26 = bracketleft braceleft bracketright braceright
control keycode 26 = Escape
alt keycode 26 = Meta_bracketleft
keycode 27 = bracketright braceright bracketleft braceleft
control keycode 27 = Control_bracketright
alt keycode 27 = Meta_bracketright
keycode 28 = Return
alt keycode 28 = Meta_Control_m
keycode 29 = Control
keycode 30 = +a +A shin shin Control_a Control_a Control_a Control_a
keycode 31 = +s +S dalet dalet Control_s Control_s Control_s Control_s
keycode 32 = +d +D gimel gimel Control_d Control_d Control_d Control_d
keycode 33 = +f +F kaf kaf Control_f Control_f Control_f Control_f
keycode 34 = +g +G ayin ayin Control_g Control_g Control_g Control_g
keycode 35 = +h +H yod yod BackSpace BackSpace BackSpace BackSpace
keycode 36 = +j +J het yod Linefeed Linefeed Linefeed Linefeed
keycode 37 = +k +K lamed finalkaf Control_k Control_k Control_k Control_k
keycode 38 = +l +L finalkaf finalkaf Control_l Control_l Control_l Control_l
keycode 39 = semicolon colon finalpe colon
alt keycode 39 = Meta_semicolon
keycode 40 = apostrophe quotedbl comma quotedbl
control keycode 40 = Control_g
alt keycode 40 = Meta_apostrophe
keycode 41 = grave asciitilde semicolon semicolon nul
alt keycode 41 = Meta_grave
keycode 42 = Shift
keycode 43 = backslash bar backslash
control keycode 43 = Control_backslash
alt keycode 43 = Meta_backslash
keycode 44 = +z +Z zayin zayin Control_z Control_z Control_z Control_z
keycode 45 = +x +X samekh samekh Control_x Control_x Control_x Control_x
keycode 46 = +c +C bet bet Control_c Control_c Control_c Control_c
keycode 47 = +v +V he he Control_v Control_v Control_v Control_v
keycode 48 = +b +B nun nun Control_b Control_b Control_b Control_b
keycode 49 = +n +N mem mem Control_n Control_n Control_n Control_n
keycode 50 = +m +M tsadi tsadi Control_m Control_m Control_m Control_m
keycode 51 = comma less tav greater
alt keycode 51 = Meta_comma
keycode 52 = period greater finaltsadi less Compose
alt keycode 52 = Meta_period
keycode 53 = slash question period question Delete
alt keycode 53 = Meta_slash
keycode 54 = Shift
keycode 56 = Alt
keycode 57 = space space space space nul
alt keycode 57 = Meta_space
keycode 58 = Caps_Lock
keycode 86 = less greater bar
alt keycode 86 = Meta_less
keycode 97 = AltGr_Lock