The uniform advice for a long time for everyone using the xmodmap approach to configure their personal keyboard has been to convert to xkb. But the latter is extremely complex, and on top of that it has terrible overall documentation (i.e., few howto's and cookbooks). Furthermore, xmodmap continued to sort of work so I (and I think many others as well) have stuck with xmodmap longer than we should have.
I have recently upgraded one of my production boxes to wheezy so I thought this would be a good opportunity to convert a fairly short .Xmodmap file I have been required to use with the edt mode of the jed editor over the years to the equivalent xkb files. I did follow links from http://pkg-xorg.alioth.debian.org/howto/configure-input.html to http://wiki.debian.org/XStrikeForce/InputHotplugGuide to http://madduck.net/docs/extending-xkb/. However, madduck's document was conversational in style with exploration of a lot of extranous dead ends he had tried so it was difficult to figure out from that document the minimum needed to get a simple conversion of a personal xmodmap file to a personal set of xkb files that did the same job. Eventually after several days of screwing around I finally achieved success so the edt mode for the jed editor works for me again. As a result of this misadventure, I believe straightforward cookbook documentation of the conversion from the personal xmodmap approach to the personal xkb approach is required. I have attached such cookbook documentation which I am happy to donate to Debian. I believe this cookbook documentation belongs on http://pkg-xorg.alioth.debian.org/howto/configure-input.html (along with a direct link to http://madduck.net/docs/extending-xkb/ as well). However, when I approached Cyril Brulebois about an update to that website with this cookbook, it turned out he was too busy with other Debian matters to deal with it at the moment, but he did suggest: "Feel free to resend your mail to debian-x@, maybe somebody else will be able to pick it up, and merge things." So that is what I have done, and I do hope somebody does pick this up for that website because those Debian users who currently use a personal xmodmap approach really do need a quick coobkbook of what to do to get converted to the equivalent personal xkb approach. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________
xmodmap_to_xkb.txt.gz
Description: cookbook documentation of a successful conversion of a modest .Xmodmap file to equivalent xkb files