Re: Typing umlauts on an english keyboard

[Arno <arno@onra.org>]

<snip>
| how? 
| this is after creating the .Xmodmap file and reading it with xmodmap.
| any clues?
</snip>

Maybe it isn't mapped on the Alt key (both Alt keys have different
keycodes) ? And also this may not work at the bash prompt (something to
do with 7/8 bits settings in ~/.inputrc, IIRC).

Try to see what modifiers are mapped by running xmodmap -pm. You need to
get something like 
mod3        Multi_key (0x71)
in the output (== maps the "compose" or multi_key to the key which code
is 113).
You can get the keycode using xev, and try to use one of the empty mod?

You can experiment on the command line by using the -e option:
xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Multi_key"
xmodmap -e "clear mod4"
xmodmap -e "add mod4 = Multi_key"
and verify the mapping with xmodmap -pm.

Once you get it on the right key, add these to ~/.xmodmaprc or
/etc/X11/Xmodmap. Here's mine to get the "compose" on the two alt keys:
#> cat /etc/X11/Xmodmap 
keycode 64 = Multi_key
keycode 113 = Multi_key
clear mod3
add mod3 = Multi_key

Also check /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose, it can show you
more combinations (if you use Latin1 encoding).

-- Arno