Re: My Alt keys don't work!

[Hugh Lawson <hlawson@triad.rr.com>]

chombee <chombee@lavabit.com> writes:

> Could someone help me sort out my keyboard configuration, or send me on
> the right track? I've investigated a little but I really don't know what
> to do. It's a somewhat tricky configuration.
>
> 1. I have two keyboards. The built-in one (it's a laptop), and an
> external one that I use. Since the keyboards are different no one
> configuration will work for both. Is it possible to have different
> configs for different keyboards?

You can do this with two different files for the xmodmap command. See
man xmodmap.

>From command line:

     xmodmap [options . . .] ~/laptop-keyboard
     or
     xmodmap [options . . .] ~/other-keyboard

To set up these files, you need some information about what keycodes
the keys are sending. You can get this with the xev command.

> 2. Since the built-in keyboard has a stuck left alt key (it presses
> itself all the time) I had to disable left alt using an Xmodmap file.
> But this also disables left alt on the external keyboard. Is there a way
> to disable the key on the built-in only?


Same advice as above. 

[ snip ]

This would be a *different* way of setting your keyboard
options from using Gnome-->System-->Preferences-->Keyboard. You would
be doing manually what the Gnome*Keyboard does semi-automatically.

Hope this helps.

Hugh