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Remapping keyboard

Revision as of 20:29, 9 January 2010

In the English variant of the N900 keyboard arrow keys have no extra symbols attached to them.

You can remap those keys to add things such as accents, umlauts or other useful symbols (e.g. `|', `<' or `>' for the X terminal).

You need to edit this file on your N900 (you should make a copy first in case something goes wrong):

/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51

The arrow keys are located at the end of the file. This example shows how to add dead acute, grave, tilde and circumflex accents (useful for writing in Portuguese) Use press Fn+Up/Down/Left/Right to use these accents.

If you want these changes to take effect immediately just type `setxkbmap us'.

xkb_symbols "arrows_4btns" {
    key <UP>   { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Up, dead_circumflex ] };
    key <LEFT> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Left, dead_acute ] };
    key <DOWN> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Down, dead_tilde ] };
    key <RGHT> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Right, dead_grave ] };
};

This example adds German umlauts:

xkb_symbols "arrows_4btns" {
    key <UP>   { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Up, udiaeresis ] };
    key <LEFT> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Left, odiaeresis ] };
    key <DOWN> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Down, adiaeresis ] };
    key <RGHT> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Right, ssharp ] };
};

This one adds Page Up, Page Down, Home and End:

xkb_symbols "arrows_4btns" {
    key <UP>   { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Up, Page_Up ] };
    key <LEFT> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Left, Home ] };
    key <DOWN> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Down, Page_Down ] };
    key <RGHT> { type[Group1] = "PC_FN_LEVEL2", symbols[Group1] = [ Right, End ] };
};

Of couse all these are just examples. You can add any other symbol you like, or you can remap any other key, not just the arrows.

If you want to know the name of a symbol, just take a look at this list of standard PC keyboard layouts as an example:

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xkeyboard-config/tree/symbols/

An alternative approach for getting custom special characters is to edit the Special characters view.