On Tue 29 Sep 2026 at 16:59:20 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 15:41:13 -0500, David Wright wrote:
> > Does /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us help? (± gb for the OP)
>
> Maybe, but without a reference to that from the xte(1) man page,
> how would one know to look at that file?
Dunno. Perhaps someone might suggest an addition to the xte
manpage like:
FILES
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/*
File that contain keysyms for various keyboard layouts.
I just happened to be consulting those files recently when I'd got
fed up with having managed to set all the keypad to be always numeric,
but with the sole exception of its Del key. (I discovered the need to
add a line in .XCompose as well as the one in .xmodmaprc, just to get
Del redefined as . successfully.)
I don't know whether there's a better vocabulary list somewhere that
gives all the keysym names in a more readable/searchable manner. For
example, guessing "EuroSign" might be tricky when you don't have an
engraved € key to press, but want € sent to the screen. In my case,
I was looking on the internet and saw mention of KP_Period, which
confused me a little because the Del key is called KP_Decimal on my
keyboards. (Perhaps the Decimal name is because some locales have
a , engraved on the key, but otherwise they appear to refer to the
same logical keysym.)
I've not had call to use xte, so it's not installed on my systems,
and I haven't seen the manpage. It sounds a bit like xdotool, and
I chuckled when I read its manpage: "BUGS Typing unusual symbols
under non-us keybindings is known to occasionally send the wrong
character."
Cheers,
David.
