Thread: keyboard question
View Single Post
aki is offline aki
2007-12-20 , 08:59
Posts: 39 | Thanked: 22 times | Joined on Nov 2007 @ Vancouver, BC
#3
I think xmodmap is working. If you don't have that app, if you have all your application repositories setup, it should be an easy install.

Once that's installed, create a file like ".xmodmap" that contains something like the following.

Code:
keycode 52 = z Z Tab Tab Tab
keycode 20 = minus braceleft underscore underscore underscore
keycode 21 = plus braceright equal equal equal
keycode 58 = m M bracketleft bracketleft bracketleft
keycode 47 = semicolon colon bracketright bracketright bracketright
keycode 60 = period greater bar bar bar
keycode 104 = Return Escape
That is just a file describing changes to the default behaviour that each key should take. Reading each entry from the "="s, the first keysym is what happens when the key is pressed, the second is when the shift key has also been pressed, the third/forth/fifth when the Fn key has been pressed. So for the "z" button, if I push "Fn"+"z", it will behave like "tab". The others are just in there for the way I use my keyboard (for programming and vi)

To implement the changes, run the following command from shell

Code:
xmodmap /path/to/your/.xmodmap
Hopefully it will work for you then. The way xmodmap works can be looked up via google. For extra constants hunt for xf86Keymap.h online.

If you are sure that your setup is working fine, you can get it to load semi-automatically by putting the xmodmap command into your .profile. It's nor perfect since it only gets executed when a shell is opened. Anyone more familiar with the system have a better solution for all this? I'll be the first to admit that it's a hackish way of going about it.