Wednesday, August 1, 2007

xmodmap to the rescue of PowerBook Belgian keyboard

After cwm(1) release three got imported in the OpenBSD tree I thought I'd give it a try someday -- That day has arrived.

My -current main terminal to hack is a PowerBook6,8 with a Belgian keyboard. Since I've been using X on this laptop with that keyboard I had to bring xmodmap(1) into the dance. After a few hours of fiddling with all those modifier keys, I finally came up with a ~/.Xmodmap file that would suit my need in ways that the keyboard shortcuts would work as expected with cwm(1) and other applications.

Nothing fancy, but maybe this could help other wandering souls:

clear Shift
clear Lock
clear Control
clear Mod1
clear Mod2

keycode 14 = parenleft 5 braceleft bracketleft
keycode 20 = parenright degree braceright bracketright
keycode 23 = Tab ISO_Left_Tab
keycode 35 = dollar asterisk EuroSign yen
keycode 36 = Return
keycode 37 = Control_L
keycode 46 = l L bar bar
keycode 49 = less greater guillemotright guillemotleft
keycode 50 = Shift_L
keycode 51 = dead_grave sterling
keycode 54 = c C copyright copyright
keycode 57 = n N asciitilde dead_tilde
keycode 60 = colon slash division backslash
keycode 64 = Alt_L
keycode 66 = Caps_Lock
keycode 94 = at numbersign
keycode 107 = BackSpace Delete Delete BackSpace
keycode 115 = Mode_switch
keycode 116 = Mode_switch

add Shift = Shift_L
add Control = Control_L
add Lock = Caps_Lock

add Mod1 = Alt_L
add Mod2 = Mode_switch


Just add the following line to your .xinitrc file and you are done:

xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

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