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Getting the FRIKKING euro key working on a Dvorak keyboard layout in Ubuntu 5.04

Posted by cpbotha on September 22nd, 2005 in ·

I’ve lost at least 5 hours of my life to the frikking euro key on my Microsoft Natural (old-style) keyboard. It seems that Gnome 2.10 on Ubuntu 5.04, otherwise a great combination, enjoys torturing its Dvorak keyboard layout users with the euro-symbol on the ‘5′ key. It simply doesn’t work, no matter what you try.

After sacrificing the prerequisite 5 hours to the Linux gods of Ultimate Non-Usability, I came up with the following solution. Make the following change to your /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pc/dvorak file:

--- dvorak.ORIG 2005-09-22 11:28:18.704428504 +0200
+++ dvorak 2005-09-22 11:45:14.296035112 +0200
@@ -16,7 +16,7 @@
key { [ 2, at ] };
key { [ 3, numbersign ] };
key { [ 4, dollar ] };
- key { [ 5, percent ] };
+ key { [ 5, percent, EuroSign, EuroSign ] };
key { [ 6, asciicircum, dead_circumflex, dead_circumflex ]};
key { [ 7, ampersand ] };
key { [ 8, asterisk ] };

Now make sure that your right-ALT generates ISO_Level3_Shift (also known as AltGr) by using xev. If your font and roughly 8000 other little settings support it, pressing right-alt-5 should make a pretty euro symbol.

3 Comments to “Getting the FRIKKING euro key working on a Dvorak keyboard layout in Ubuntu 5.04″

  1. Alper said...
    September 22, 2005

    Fellow Dvorak user here. Oh my god! This looks so hideously complicated.

    I was trying to figure out what all these bizarre incantations signified when I remembered something. I’ve got the line
    ‘keycode 113 = Multi_key’
    in my .Xmodmap. This makes my right-ALT do lots of funky stuff. For instance being able to write my name properly: Alper Çuğun (Ç = RALT,C and ğ = RALT(g ) without entering oddly-based numerical codes.
    And I just now found out I can make euros (symbols not real ones) appear by doing RALTe= €€€.

    Coolness.

  2. Charl P. Botha said...
    September 23, 2005

    I have such things in my .Xmodmap as well, but I wanted to do it the Gnome Way(tm). At least now we have all these tips in one place, Alper Çuğun. ;)
    (I could make the Ç with RALT, or AltGr, but I had to make the ğ with my dedicated multikey, in my case the right windows key.)

  3. Charl P. Botha said...
    September 24, 2005

    Note to self: in order to get the same international character capability with a Dvorak key-layout in Windows XP, get, install and activate the “United States-Dvorak International Alternate” layout from http://keyboards.jargon-file.org/

    Now you don’t have to toggle back and forth US-International and US-Dvorak when you’re writing those pesky internationally oriented €mäîlß. (That’s “emails” for you internationally challenged individuals.)

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