VoytekG

Hey!
I installed Linux last night and I chose the option of letting my keyboard spell with international symbols (accented letters, etc.). However, now I cannot use stuff like apostrophes or question marks because they were replaced with those accented letters! Does anyone know how I can switch to the other keyboard setting
Thanks!
-Voytek

Dolda2000

You can run "xmodmap /usr/share/xmodmap/xmodmap.us" to set it to U.S. layout temporarily. That will be reset every time you log out, though. If you tell me what distro you have, I might be able to help you set it permanently.
I'm sure that you have question marks and stuff though, only that they're somewhere else on the keyboard.

wassy121

sometimes when you put it into a different character map you can have a kind of "meta" key (not the real meta key, I don't know the word I am looking for). Like the right alt key will put it into a different mode where e becomes that e with the silly little accent over it and stuff. I remember doing that once, but forget what exactly I did offhand.

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I respectfully decline the invitation to join your delusion.

Dolda2000

You U.S. guys might not know it, but on many European keyboards, including my Swedish one (though I use the far superiour U.S. layout), the right ALT key is called ALT GR (GR as in graphic), and has long (since the first international keyboards) been used to produce alternative characters, like ALT GR+4 does the dollar sign, while Shift+4, produces a ¤ character. (I have no idea what that is, though; I've never used that character) If you look through some kernel keymaps, you'll find notes about that, since Linus was using a Swedish keyboard when he started writing Linux.

VoytekG

Using the alt key, you can click ALT+130 for é, like wassy121 said. However, when I was installing Linux, this did not work. I sometimes write in French, so I need this - I thought installing the special stuff would make it supported, but all it did was making my question mark replaced with the character, and I need the question mark more than the é.

I am currently using Redhat Linux 7.2, if that is what you meant.

Thanks,
Voytek

Dolda2000

If you use GNOME, there is an applet called the "Keyboard Layout Switcher", which enables you to set a shortcut for switching between layouts. I find it very useful.

VoytekG

THANK YOU!!!
???
WOW!
-Voytek

wassy121

¤ : depending on what locale you are in this looks different. I think this has been reassigned to the "euro" symbol. You know, the stupid looking E that looks like a backwards C with a strikethrough. Damn europeans. Anyway, the GNOME keymap switcher is just a frontend to loadkeys I think.

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I respectfully decline the invitation to join your delusion.

Dolda2000

The GNOME keymap switcher is a frontend to gkb_xmmap, which is a frontend to xmodmap. Just so that you know...

However, you can display both of these characters at the same time, see: ¤€, so it's not really like that. However, I think the euro symbol is implemented as a Unicode character, because it's not visible in gnome-character-map, and I can't type in an xterm when it's set to normal 8-bit operation. In UTF-8 mode, I can type it, but it displays as a space, so it doesn't seem to be in the font. I still can't think of what the ¤ character has ever been good for. (By the way, on European keyboards, you can type the Euro symbol with ALT GR+e)

Say what you will, but I think the Euro symbol looks really good and currency-like. I don't like the name Euro, though.