You have two tools for configuring your keyboard. Under plain
Linux you have loadkeys
and under X11 you have xmodmap
.
To try out loadkeys
type one of these two commands:
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk.map
loadkeys /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map
The difference between the two keymaps is that dk-latin1.map
enables `dead' keys while dk.map
doesn't. Dead keys are explained
in section
Dead keys and accented characters. The
program loadkeys
and the keymaps are part of the package
kbd-0.xx.tar.gz
which (with differing version numbers xx) is available
with all Linux distributions.
Usually loadkeys
is executed at boot-time from one of the scripts
in the directory /etc/rc.d/
. Details vary widely between
distributions but it's a good idea to look for a file called
rc.keymap
.
(Note for non-Danish users: Support for other languages is enabled
in a similar manner. Use es.map
for Spanish keyboards etc.)
X11 will normally follow the keymap used by plain Linux, but you can
modify keyboard behavior under X11 with xmodmap
. Usually the X11
initialization process will run this command automatically if you have
a file called .Xmodmap
in your home directory.
Edit the file /etc/X11/XF86Config
(or possibly
/etc/XF86Config
) and make sure the line
RightAlt ModeShift
appears in the Keyboard
section. Usually you can do this by
uncommenting the appropriate line. In XFree86 v3.1.2 you can use
AltGr
as an alias for RightAlt
.
Dead keys are those who don't type anything until you hit another
key. Tildes and umlauts are like this by default under plain Linux if
you use the dk-latin1.map
keymap. This is the default
behaviour for these keys under Microsoft Windows as well.
Under plain Linux type
loadkeys dk.map
Under plain Linux type
loadkeys dk-latin1.map
First you must make sure you are running XFree86 v3.1.2 or
higher. Download and install everything related to this release if
you have a lower version number. Dead keys won't work in X11R6 applications
unless these are compiled with support for this input method. A useful
example of such an application is GNU emacs
version 19.30 (or higher)
or the version of xterm
available at
ftp.x.org as
xterm-R6-sb_right-ansi-3d.tar.gz
.
Next you'll have to map a key to Compose
or (equivalently)
Multi_Key
. The Scroll Lock
key is most likely already
mapped as such (you can verify this with the program xev
), and it is
easy to map the right Control
key by uncommenting the appropriate
line in the Keyboard
section of the XFree86 configuration file (often
/etc/X11/XF86Config
). If you wish to use some other key you should
put something like
keycode 78 = Multi_key
in your ~/.Xmodmap
file.
Finally make sure your shell and/or application is set up for
ISO-8859-1 compatibility as described in section
International character sets in specific applications and you should
be all set. You can e.g. get ã by typing
<Compose><a><~>
. If dead keys work under
plain Linux they should also work under X11 now.
The available keystroke combinations are compiled in
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/locale/iso8859-1/Compose
. There are some
bugs in this table you will want to fix:
<dead_tilde> <space> : "~" tilde
should be changed to
<dead_tilde> <space> : "~" asciitilde
asciicircum
is misspelled as asciicirum
Some X applications does not support this general input method. Eventually this situation might improve, but until then you can either hack your applications or submit polite bug reports to their authors. The latter method is often the most efficient. See section Programming tips for X11 for some advice on what needs to be done.
There's a bug in the Danish keymaps causing the dollar sign to be accessed
with Shift-4
instead of AltGr-4
by default. If this is a problem
for you, determine what keymap you load at boot-up. You can find it by
looking around in the directory /etc/rc.d/
or simply by paying
attention to what happens at boot-up. On my computer the relevant keymap is
called /usr/lib/kbd/keytables/dk-latin1.map
. You can fix the problem
by changing the line
keycode 5 = four dollar dollar
in the keymap file to
keycode 5 = four currency dollar
and then loading the keytable as described in section
Loading a keytable. Currency (Dansk: "soltegn")
is the default Shift-4
character on a Danish keyboard.
This fixes the problem for both X11 and plain Linux.
On some older distributions ø and Ø appear as cent and yen. Find the line for keycode 40 in the keymap file and change it from
keycode 40 = cent yen
to
keycode 40 = +oslash +Ooblique
Note: This bug appears to have been fixed in kbd-0.88.tar.gz
and newer
versions.
The plus signs are necessary to get Caps Lock
working properly. Oslash
can be used as an alias for Ooblique in kbd-0.90.tar.gz
and newer
versions.