Sorry for taking so long to reply to this. My mistake was to assume that all changes in gnome keyboard preferences took effect immediately. That's why nothing seemed to work. I now have the win keys as 3rd level choosers and I can type åååååååååååååååååååååååååååååååååååååå to my heart's content. I was also unaware that you could use the space key after a deadkey, which is a lot easier than a vulcan nerve pinch. Anyway, thanks very much for your help, Bo.
One further question I have is, does anyone know a good guide to customising a keyboard layout and installing it properly so that X will recognise it? The guide I have tried so far didn't work for me. I simply want to add a few characters (e.g. em_dash) to the empty spaces on the US international keyboard. btw, the mac keyboard article Bo suggested was about how to make mac modifier keys useful under linux and not about keyboard layouts as such. Many thanks, Robert Bo Ørsted Andresen wrote: > On Monday 26 June 2006 01:36, Robert Persson wrote: > >> The problem is that I don't know how to get it so that when I >> press either the alt or the win key I get all those extra characters. >> > > I don't think that pressing alt, win or meta should provide any extra > characters with the us international keyboard layout. > > >> Added to that is all this business about alt being set or not being set to >> meta and so on. >> > > I don't think that is relevant to the layout. Only to functionality in > certain > programs like e.g. emacs as you mentioned. Many others too. > > >> Compare this to macos, even very ancient version of it, where you get a very >> rich keyboard layout out of the box. >> > > I wouldn't know... > > >> Not only umlauts, but bullets, ellipses and the 2nd letter of the Danish >> alphabet are available at the press of the alt/option key. >> > > The second letter in the danish alphabet is b... ;) > > >> The second issue is that the US international keyboard, which I am >> planning to use, isn't exactly ideal. It was designed for an ordinary >> typewriter, where diareses and double quotes, as well as carets and >> circumflexes, are identical. >> > > Are you absolutely sure they are identical? When I press a dead key once > nothing happens. The following press be it the say key, space or some vowel > determines what it becomes... > > >> But it is the only extended US keyboard readily available for X, which is >> the only reason I even consider using it. However it is actually unusable on >> a desktop without the extra modifier keys working because, where the >> standard US keyboard has quotes, carets and tildes, this one only has dead >> keys. >> > > You should not need modifier keys for that. Just AltGr (the right alt key on > my keyboard). > > >> As I said, the Apple keyboard layouts are vastly superior. Unfortunately my >> attempts to create a custom, Apple-like layout (when I was using KDE) >> didn't work. I just don't understand xkb well enough. >> > > Does [1] help you? > > [1] http://hansmi.ch/articles/apple-keyboard-with-linux > > -- Robert Persson Kalium Kalzium Eisen Magnesium Carbohydrat Protein A B C D Vitamin -- [email protected] mailing list
