darkness

Today I was fighting with YDL 3.0 keys in X Windows. I’ve previous fought with keys in X on my Powerbook. Option "CustomKeycodes" and the other modifications described in that entry weren’t sufficient for only one reason: somehow, right arrow starts sending the keycode for home. I can’t seem to find a way to change this without going to the source to at least add some logging statements, since I don’t entirely grasp how all of Xkb works. (OK, that’s a lie: I basically understand none of it.)

The default key setup in X this time is almost passable, though, as opposed to YDL 2.3. I still have this problem of a lack of insert and delete keys, though. Now I’ve got the enter key next to the space bar, which is keypad enter, mapped to insert; and Fn + right Alt, which is usually… Alt_R (right Alt; if you don’t press Fn, it’s still left Alt, Alt_L), mapped to delete since I use it far less frequently. This worked out well enough.

That was too easy, though, so I had to find something else wrong. Namely, Alt was being treated as Alt, and the Apple key was being treated as Meta. Fuckers! I couldn’t get this fixed up in ~/.Xmodmap either, no matter how hard I tried. The problem with this was that I couldn’t do Apple key + backspace in a terminal window, which is like Emacs’ backward-kill-word. This just wouldn’t do. Of course, after dicking with xmodmap forever, I decided to search on something like “emacs alt meta.” This revealed the existence of the altwin option. I gather this option is most used for working with the two Windows keys on a PC-104 keyboard, to set the Windows key to Meta or Alt or other combinations like that. You can check out /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/rules/xfree86.lst for a list of different options it seems. I tried Option "XkbOptions" "altwin:meta_alt" and it worked: now my Apple key works as Meta, but I can backward-kill-word in gnome-terminal/bash. Happy days.

As a bonus, here’s my new ~/.Xmodmap:

keycode 108 = Insert
keycode 113 = Delete
remove Mod1 = Alt_R

Also, I had to use the Gnome menu editing fix mentioned in my previous entry. Worked like a charm. gtkpbbuttons keeps dying and I can’t seem to get it to restart. Don’t forget you can set trackball options in /etc/sysconfig/trackpad, though I kind of suspect that the trackpad service isn’t starting properly, or its settings are later being overridden, so I have to service restart trackpad when I first log in to X. YDL 3.0’s /etc/sysconfig/i18n doesn’t have UTF-8 in it — hallelujah. fnset still isn’t included, but you can fondle the kbdmode setting in /etc/pbbuttonsd.conf. I left mouse button emulation on and set it to use F11 and F12 for middle and right mouse buttons, respectively. I turned this off before, but now I’m thinking it’s a good thing. (Note: must stop watching Martha Stewart media with darkho.)