Hello All,

I am unable to get XKB to use my customised keyboard map. As far as I 
understand, the relevant error message appears in the XServer log:

(**) XKB: keymap: "uk_iso" (overrides other XKB settings)
(==) Keyboard: CustomKeycode disabled

My question is: where is the default setting that disables a custom keymap? 
And also, what syntax do I need to use to enable it? (If it isn't obvious!)

I will try to explain explain what I have done, as it is potentially relevant 
information. Although some of this will be just pointless background info.

I have an UK laptop, and so I suffer from the usual problem of missing keys. 
As well, I write regularly in both English and Portuguese and sometimes in 
Spanish, so I really want some ISO symbols to be handy and the rules for 
composed (accented) characters to be natural.

I decided I wanted all symbols provided by ISO-8859-15 to be accessed via ALT 
combinations. Furthermore, I decided that the left ALT should be used solely 
for META combinations (in accordance with the "alt_is_meta" keyboard 
definition for the console), and that ALTGR (the "missing" one, but remapped 
to the windows menu key) should give the extra symbol in the key.

Traditionally the UK keyboard only has two ALT+key symbol definitions: the 
brokenbar and the euro; so there is space to add the remaining ones. In fact, 
the brokenbar is not an ISO-8859-15 symbol and I don't have any reason to use 
it, nevertheless, there are quite some symbols and that means that I need to 
put a few on alphabetic keys. After some trials, I was very happy with the 
keymap I had designed for the Linux console, where everything is working.

When trying to implement my new keyboard layout in X, I soon realised that it 
was not possible to do it by just using an Xmodmap file. For example, I need 
to define two types of "THREE_LEVEL" keys: the symbols one and the alphabetic 
one. Another thing I want is to implement an "alt_is_meta" behaviour for the 
"ALT_L" key. (Maybe simply setting it as "META_L" would be enough, but I 
don't know if I would lose CTRL+ALT+BACK_SPACE or other ALT combinations. I 
need to experiment.)

Basically, the sections I really want to modify in XKB are: types, symbols, 
and compatibility. However, ideally I want to have just a single keymap file 
with all my settings, and then simply put in my XF86Config:

Section "InputDevice"
   Identifier "My Keyboard"
   Driver "keyboard"
   Option "XkbKeymap" "uk_iso"
EndSection

(By the way, I am using Slackware 8.0, which comes with XFree86-4.1.0)

So what did I do?

First, I read the xkbcomp man page and generated the keymap file for the 
gb(pc105) layout I was using with the command:

xkbcomp -a -dflts -opt cgkst -xkb -w 10 -o uk_iso :0.0

Then I edited this "uk_iso" file, using the files under /etc/X11/xkb and my 
intuition as guidance. It is very unfortunate that I don't understand Russian 
because the web pages of Ivan Pascal, at www.tsu.ru/~pascal/other/xkb, are 
surelly a must.

Anyway, I wrote definitions for the new key types I wanted and changed the 
symbols section accordingly. After a few trials I got a successful keymap 
compilation with the command:

xkbcomp -xkm -w 10 uk_iso

The problems really started when I tried to use my new keymap file. The 
setxkbmap utility wouldn't work and setting XF86Config as above gave the 
error I mention in the beginning.

I wasted time in breaking down my keymap file into the different sections, 
like the ones under /etc/X11/xkb, and changing the files 
/etc/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86 and /etc/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86.lst, as well as 
generating new /etc/X11/xkb/*.dir files with the command:

xkbcomp -w 10 -lfhlpR -o symbols.dir -p1 'symbols/*'

All this to if then my "uk_iso" map was not considered a custom keymap, but 
the result was the same. So now I am out of ideas.

Thanks,

Francisco Lobo
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