Bug#235652: xbase-clients: key remaped with xmodmap fails to respond as expected to shifting

[barbier@linuxfr.org (Denis Barbier)]

On Mon, Mar 01, 2004 at 12:55:25PM -0500, Dave Harding wrote:
> Package: xbase-clients
> Version: 4.3.0-2
> Severity: normal
> 
> When remapping the "\|" key to the "Backspace" key and vice versa on a standard US 104 keyboard using:
> 
> xmodmap -e 'keycode 22 = backslash bar'
> xmodmap -e 'keycode 51 = BackSpace'
> 
> Pressing "backspace" generates "\" when pressed as expected.
> Pressing "Shift+backspace" does not generate "|", as expected.  Pressing
> "Shift+<|\>" also does not generate "|".  This behavior has been
> reported to function as expected to me since at lease XFree 3.3.x 
> but not >=4.3

Hi,

I believe that this is due to /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc/pc:
  key <BKSP> {
      type="CTRL+ALT",
      symbols[Group1]= [ BackSpace,   Terminate_Server ]
  };
and thus is not a bug.

You have to set type to TWO_LEVEL if you want Shift+backspace to produce
a bar.  For the record, I proposed in
  http://lists.debian.org/debian-user-french/2004/debian-user-french-200402/msg01539.html
a solution (in French, but it mostly consists of shell commands) for
someone who needed to customize his function keys without root access.
I will be glad to learn if there are better alternatives to customize
XKB.

Denis