Aleksandersen

Hi,

I am usually not a slow learner. However xmodmap remains a mystery to me! I have studied examples, read the manual, searched the web, ... I still do not get it.

Please explain in detail in ultra–slow–motion–using–a–teaspoon how to modify my hyphen key. I want it to work like this:

• - = hyphen-minus (-) U+002D
• Menu + - = figure dash (‒) U+2012
• AltGr + - = en dash (–) U+2013
• AltGr + Shift + -= em dash (—) U+2014

Thanks for your patience!

DavidMcCann

If you are still there and waiting, Alek, try this:

1. Start a text editor and enter this line
xmodmap -e 'keycode 20 = minus figdash endash emdash'
2. Save in your home directory with a suitable name like ~/.mykeys
3. Enter the menu and find in the system-preferences-sessions box the startup programs option. Add an entry for the script you've just written, like /home/alex/.mykeys

This should work. Mind you, on my system only the first two definitions get read: the AltGr ones are ignored!

The alternative is to go to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/latin or /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/latin (different distros use different addresses) and alter the file.

Incidentally, are you sure you won't need the underscore character? And the en-dash and figure-dash will probably be the same: they are in any printer's fonts I've ever met. The extra point in Unicode is probably for languages like Russian where there's no en-dash and they use the em-dash instead.

Aleksandersen

Are the keycodes the same om every computer? What does the arangement of the dashes have to say? Which keys, etc?

I meant horizonal bar and not figure dash.