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

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 <ae02> { [         2,  at              ]       };
     key <ae03> { [         3,  numbersign      ]       };
     key <ae04> { [         4,  dollar          ]       };
-    key <ae05> { [         5,  percent         ]       };
+    key <ae05> { [         5,  percent, EuroSign, EuroSign ] };
     key <ae06> { [         6,  asciicircum, dead_circumflex, dead_circumflex ]};
     key <ae07> { [         7,  ampersand       ]       };
     key <ae08> { [         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.