I'm quite often answering questions related to keyboard input and how to switch the keyboard layout. First of all it is possible and it is not really as difficult Solaris made a significant progress in keyboard input area and there is also a GUI and platform independent framework for it. So if you need a specific keyboard layout you have basically to options: 1) to use IIIMF and its preference editor 2) to set up a Xserver I recommend the first option, but there are some constrains. So if that doesn't work for you there is still the second option and you can set up a Xserver in the same way as it can be setup on all systems using Xorg.

1) Switching Keyboard Layout in Solaris using IIIMF

Constrains: JDS/CDE desktop, UTF-8 locale IIIMF - Internet Intranet Input Method Framework is openi18n.org project used by Solaris to provide national characters input originally targeted for Asian languages and designed by Hideki Hiura. Recently also support for European keyboards was added so this framework is covering all languages now. You can find European keyboard support there in OpenSolaris, Solaris Express Community and Developer Edition >b57 and Solaris 10 8/07.

To switch the keyboard layout look at Input Method Preference Editor (accessible by default from the panel clicking on Input Method Switcher applet or from terminal "$ iiim-properties"

In the Input Method Preference Editor you can customize the list of required keyboard layouts

Once you have added layouts you need you can start using them. To switch to wanted layout select it in Input Method Switcher applet. The layout must be activated (use ctrl+space shortcut to activate/deactivate) otherwise default Xserver setting is used. You can easily recognize the layout is activated when "keyboard" keyword is displayed on the panel next to layout code.

If keyboard layout or input method is not activated the default Xserver is used. I recommend to not set anything regarding to keyboards and to use US-English layout as the default one. But it may happen you have selected the keyboard layout during installation process or you configured keyboard layout on the Xserver side. This couldn't cause problems, but if yes go again to Input Method Preference Editor and double check the setting if Xserver keyboard layout autodetection is correct. If not disable the autodetection and select your layout manually.

Switching Keyboard Layout in Solaris setting up the Xserver

 

In case you are working in non UTF-8 locale or using other window manager than JDS/CDE you will need to configure your Xserver to switch to keyboard layout. Solaris is using Xorg xserver on x86 and Xsun on Sparc, but in general both Xservers are available on both platforms, well the Xorg is the preferred one. There is couple of ways how to switch the layout.

If you don't need switching between keyboard layouts on the fly and you just need to set one permanently

 you can use "kbd -s" utility:
--------------------------
   bash-3.2$ kbd -s
 1. Albanian                      22. Latvian                       
 2. Belarusian                    23. Macedonian                    
 3. Belgian                       24. Malta_UK                      
 4. Bulgarian                     25. Malta_US                      
 5. Croatian                      26. Norwegian                     
 6. Czech                         27. Polish                        
 7. Danish                        28. Portuguese                    
 8. Dutch                         29. Russian                       
 9. Finnish                       30. Serbia-And-Montenegro         
10. French                        31. Slovenian                     
11. French-Canadian               32. Slovakian                     
12. Hungarian                     33. Spanish                       
13. German                        34. Swedish                       
14. Greek                         35. Swiss-French                  
15. Icelandic                     36. Swiss-German                  
16. Italian                       37. Taiwanese                     
17. Japanese-type6                38. TurkishQ                      
18. Japanese                      39. TurkishF                      
19. Korean                        40. UK-English                    
20. Latin-American                41. US-English                    
21. Lithuanian                    
To select the keyboard layout, enter a number [default 41]:
--------------------------

To pick up a layout you need to restart your Xserver (logout/login).

 

In most of case you need to switch between keyboard layouts on the fly. This is possible only on Xorg. You need to make manual setup in xorg.conf (/etc/X11/xorg.conf). If you don't have xorg.conf you have to create it. Again there is more options:

1) run "/usr/X11/bin/xorgconfig" -- interactive setting
2) run "/usr/X11/bin/Xorg -configure" -- non interactive

Once you have the xorg.conf you can customize it. Open it and look at the keyboard section. You should have something similar to below example there:

 # vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
...
    Option "XkbRules"   "xorg"
    Option "XkbModel"   "sun_type6_euro_usb"
    Option "XkbLayout"  "us,de,es"
    Option "XkbOptions" "grp:shifts_toggle"

Such settings enables you to toggle between US-English, German, Spanish keyboard layouts on the fly using defined shortcut. In shown example I use both shift keys. You can look at An Unreliable Guide to XKB Configuration written by Doug Palmer (http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/html/index.html) if you are interested in Xorg keyboard settings.

 

Switching Keyboard Layout in Solaris - Compose Key

 

If you don't need necessarily complete keyboard layout but need just time to time to input a special national character there is a compose key in Solaris. Some keyboards (e.g. Sun Type USB) have this key physically for other keyboards the compose key is mapped to the "menu key". The Compose key sequence is used to input characters with diacritical marks and other characters that are not shown on the keyboard key caps.

Mark                 Compose Key Combination                Example
Dieresis A               Compose A “ —> A with diaeresis        Ä
Caron v                  Compose Z v —> Z with caron            Ž
Breve u                  Compose G u —> G with breve            Ğ
Registered Sign          Compose R O —> Registered sign         ®
Copyright Sign           Compose c o —> Registered sign         ©
Inv. Exclamation Mark    Compose ! ! —> Inv. Exclamation Mark   ¡

 

To see all possible combinations look at Solaris 10 International Language Support Collection >> International Language Environments Guide (http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-2521?l=en) or this is directly defined for each locale in /usr/openwin/lib/locale//Compose.