Keyboard-only Language Support

[Jack Waugh]

When I follow the first instructions I come across for loading lanugage support, I see it's downloading help files for the Gimp, etc, which don't draw my interest and waste disk space and download time. I just want the keyboard layouts for the languages. What packages to install would suffice for that (for French, German, etc.)?

[Impavidus]

You can edit your user settings for keyboards. I don't think you have to download any additional packages. You can set a key to switch keyboard layout. If it's just to get the additional characters without turning your qwerty keyboard into an azerty one (which would be very confusing), you may be able to use some sort of international layout, with third and fourth level choosers. Dead keys can be useful too, for typing accents and other diacritical marks.