[gentoo-ppc-dev] German keymap (X) for ibook2

[Stefan Boresch]

I thought I'd report my experience getting my German keyboard on
my ibook2 to work in X-Windows; maybe the following is useful
for others, maybe someone who actually understands xkb can come up
with a cleaner solution (patch to the xkb stuff distributed with
the xfree86 package). I should add that I'm running xfree 4.2.99.4.
[I want to thank Vincent Strubel, who sent me a French keymap,
but the solution below works best for me.]

Most of the solutions found on the web (including ready made
working keymaps) are problematic because one has to fit the
respective file(s) into the xkb file structure, which -- despite
Doug Palmer's guide (http://www.charvolant.org/~doug/xkb/) I fail
to understand.  E.g., http://www.pl-berichte.de/t_system/ibook-debian/ 
comes with "everything", but even if you replace the 4.2.99.4 xkb
file tree with that of the authors, you end up with a pre-xkb US
keyboard :-( [BTW, that link may be useful for those running older
xfree versions]

In the end, my "knowledge" comes from a search on groups.google.com
with searchwords "book keymap german" I basically followed 

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/support/solutions/ydl_general/keyboard_german.shtml

which involves editing /etc/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86 by
replacing <RALT> = 113 with <RALT> = 115 and commenting out
the line <LWIN> = 115.  If you do this, and add to your XF86Config

Option "XkbModel" "pc102" # to get <>| (!!!), otherwise the key is
                          # dead!!
Option "XkbLayout" "de"
Option "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys"

then you get a German keyboard reminiscent of a PC keyboard, where
the AltGr (right Alt button) is mapped to *both* "Apple" keys.

Words of caution: (1) The method described does not respect the Mac
OS way of getting extra keys, which for me is good as I "live" in
Linux and use PC keyboards most of the time anyways. (2) Going
directly to /etc/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86 affects all of xkb, but
so far I have not noted any problems, neither with the german nor
with the US keyboard layout. (3) You loose the "numeric keypad";
i.e. hitting numlock does not any more activate the little gray
numeric keypad keys, can't say that this is a problem for me (4)
The Debian people had some detailed discussion about this, but most
of me is too xkb-intensive; I guess anyone interested in doing it
"right" should probably look at 

http://groups.google.at/groups?hl=de&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&threadm=1011141829.21934.3768.camel%40pismo&rnum=9&prev=/groups%3Fq%3Dibook%2Bkeymap%2Bgerman%26hl%3Dde%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG%26scoring%3Dd

The main complaint against "my" solution seems that you loose the
Meta-L key (which I haven't missed so far ;-); and it would seem
to me that one could always map that key to the strange Apple
specific key next to the right "Apple" key ...

As I said, I hope that helps others!

Stefan

-- 
Stefan Boresch
Institute for Theoretical Chemistry and Structural Molecular Biology
University of Vienna, Waehringerstr. 17       A-1090 Vienna, Austria
Phone: -43-1-427752715                        Fax:   -43-1-427752790

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