Re: [Fink-users] powerbook keyboard and gnome

Richard Cobbe wrote:
[]
> See the thread at
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.apple.fink.gnome/2070 for a
> discussion and my imperfect but usable workaround.  If anyone needs
> additional help creating the good .xmodmaprc file or with the rest of
> the workaround, please feel free to contact me.

You can create an xmodmap file corresponding to your current good keymap 
from the output of

   xmodmap -pke

This, of course, needs to be run before gnome gets a chance to destroy 
the keymap, for example without X11 running and without any mention of 
gnome in ~/.xinitrc.

Then, if you name this file ~/.Xmodmap, it will be seen by the 
gnome-settings-daemon. The first time it sees it, it opens a little 
window and asks you if it should load it and subsequently it loads it 
automatically. At least that is what I just saw after removing the 
~/.gnome2*  and ~/.gconf* directories and starting 
/sw/lib/control-center/gnome-settings-daemon from the command line.

I suggest therefore the following procedure:

1. Quit X11 and move ~/.xinitrc out of the way. Then run

   xmodmap -pke > ~/.Xmodmap

   (This will start X11 again.)

2. Clean your config files:

   rm -rf ~/.gconf* ~/.gnome2*

3. Run the gnome-settings-daemon:

   /sw/lib/control-center/gnome-settings-daemon

This will open a window where you can choose .Xmodmap, click on "+Load" 
and then "OK".

 From then on, your gnome keymap should be OK.

An uglier, but much simpler hack is described at the end of this message.

 From control-center I still get error messages about not being able to 
start the gnome-settings-daemon, but at least the keymap is now OK.

Here is how I explain the situation: The gnome-applets package installs 
a whole bunch of xmodmap files into /sw/share/xmodmap/, and almost all 
of these are crap. There is even one, xmodmap.us-mac, that admits 
unashamedly what it does. Here is an excerpt:

! This file makes the following changes:
[]
! The "Q" key generates udiaeresis, Udiaeresis, diaeresis, and 
dead_diaeresis
! The "W" key generates oacute, Oacute, cedilla, and dead_cedilla
! The "E" key generates BackSpace
! The "R" key generates Tab and ISO_Left_Tab
! The "T" key generates w, W, bar, and Lstroke
! The "Y" key generates q, Q, backslash, and Greek_OMEGA

and so on. This is just the braindamage one gets by default from gnome, 
because by default it runs xmodmap /sw/share/xmodmap/xmopdmap.us, which 
has the same keycode table. If there is a joke behind this deliberate 
garbling of the keyboard, I don't get it.

There is actually one keymap (out of 86) in that directory that works 
OK, xmodmap.de-apple, but this is the only one.

The ugly hack is to prevent the loading of the garbled keymaps by simply 
moving the whole directory /sw/share/xmodmap out of the way. There  may 
then be an error message about not finding some file, but at least the 
keymap is not destroyed.

-- 
Martin







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