Re: umlauts once again :)

[Nicolas Juge <njuge@bioinfo.ulaval.ca>]

Hello,
Le December 25, 2004 06:38 pm, peter plessas a écrit :
> Hi!
>
> i know this has been dealt with before, but i didn't find any real
> answers in the list's archive:
>
> I have an US keyboard, how can i type umlauts such as: "ü ö ä"?
>
> (except for using kde's kcharselect applet (which means clicking on the
> desired letter and pasting it to where it's needed?)

The 'nice' way should be to select U.S. English w/deadkeys (us_intl) from the 
KDE Control Panel.

But KDE Keyboard Layout uses 'setxkbmap' which seems to be broken for a while 
now (at least for us_intl map). If you run it by your own, you'll get an 
error message:

  setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us_intl
  Error loading new keyboard description

This is not specific to PPC port, the same thing happens on i386 (sarge). I 
guess that it's related to XFree86 libs.

Anyway, here is a workaround that could save you some time. Put the following 
lines in a file named .xmodmap in your $HOME: (this is my config file and all 
the lines won't be usefull to you as my mother tongue is french). 

############# cut below ###############
remove Mod1    = Alt_R
remove Mod4    = Meta_L Meta_R
remove Mod5    = Scroll_Lock
keycode 0x43 =  F1      XF86_Switch_VT_1
keycode 0x44 =  F2      XF86_Switch_VT_2
keycode 0x45 =  F3      XF86_Switch_VT_3
keycode 0x46 =  F4      XF86_Switch_VT_4
keycode 0x47 =  F5      XF86_Switch_VT_5
keycode 0x48 =  F6      XF86_Switch_VT_6
keycode 0x49 =  F7      XF86_Switch_VT_7
keycode 0x4A =  F8      XF86_Switch_VT_8
keycode 0x4B =  F9      XF86_Switch_VT_9
keycode 0x4C =  F10     XF86_Switch_VT_10
keycode 0x5F =  F11     XF86_Switch_VT_11
keycode 0x60 =  F12     XF86_Switch_VT_12
keycode 0x0F =  6       dead_circumflex
keycode 0x31 =  dead_grave      asciitilde
keycode 0x16 =  BackSpace       Terminate_Server
keycode 0x6F =  Print   Sys_Req
keycode 0x30 =  dead_acute      dead_diaeresis
keycode 0x40 =  Alt_L   Meta_L
keycode 0x71 =  Alt_R   Meta_R
keycode 0x73 =  Super_L
keycode 0x74 =  Super_R
add    Control = Control_R
add    Mod1    = 0x007D 0x009C
add    Mod2    = Num_Lock
add    Mod4    = 0x007F 0x0080
add    Mod5    = Mode_switch ISO_Level3_Shift
############# cut above ############### 

Then run:

  xmodmap .xmodmap

and you'll get the umlaut by pressing " followed by any letter. Example:
" + u will give you ü. If you want the double quotes, you have to press " + 
space bar. 

Hope this helps.

Nicolas


>
> thanks again!

-- 
Nicolas Juge                                     Université Laval
njuge at bioinfo.ulaval.ca                       Centre de bioinformatique