Xmodmap

Since I started to hack for profit I found that sometimes a spanish/latam keyboard can be a PITA thanks to the place chosen for 'irrelevant' characters like { }, [ ], /, \, etc.

I have used a latam keyboard all my life, contrary to popular believe a latam keyboard is not the same than a spanish keyboard. Latam keyboard layout however offers some advantages to me (well to me, maybe not for you) like heavy AltGr use, since US keyboard doesn't even consider right Alt as something worth using I tried some other keyboard layouts and found the british english one (en_GB), this layout uses AltGr with passion and also has some modifications to the US layout that I found great.

However, not everything was fine so I decided to make some modifications so my layout would be an hydrib between latam and british layouts. I wanted the following (sorry but explaining where is which key is kind of hard):

SHIFT + \ should produce | (this key is 2 keys to the right of L)
SHIFT + ' should produce " (like in US layout, in british this produces @)
SHIFT + 3 should produce #
My <> key should work and also should produce a | when pressed with AltGr
Left bracket key (next to the right of P) should give a acute when pressed with AltGr
The key beneath P should give a ñ when pressed with AltGr

So after some wrestling with google and X config docs I came up with this:


  keycode 0x5E =  less    greater less    greater bar     brokenbar       bar     brokenbar
  keycode 0x33 =  backslash       bar     backslash       bar     dead_grave      dead_breve
  keycode 0x0C =  3       numbersign      3       numbersign      threesuperior   sterling
  keycode 0x0B =  2   at    2   at  twosuperior oneeighth
  keycode 0x30 =  apostrophe  quotedbl  apostrophe  quotedbl    dead_circumflex dead_caron
  keycode 0x22 =  bracketleft     braceleft       bracketleft     braceleft       dead_acute      dead_abovering
  keycode 0x2F =  semicolon   colon   semicolon   colon   ntilde  dead_doubleacute

This will enable all of the above behaviors, this might not work with your keyboard because my layout is pc105 with funky IBM keys but I guess it should work since all the keys modified are standard keys.

To make those lines useful you need to save them in a file and execute:

xmodmap my_file

I added that to my ~/.bashrc.

By the way, I'm also using Caps Lock as Compose key but I might end using only AltGr, I will try that later.

diego, el gnomo » hacks » xmodmap

Xmodmap