How to setup international keyboard in X Window with Xmodmap and XKB
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# 1. Introduction

## 1.1. Copyright

This documentation is free documentation; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This documentation is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

## 1.2. Revision history

Revision History
Revision 1.6 | 2002-11-19 |
Some links added, info on newer Linux versions included, major formatting changes
Revision 1.5 | 2001-12-03 |
Links on internationalization added, info on XKB, troubleshooting, info on newer Linux versions, StarOffice 6
Revision 1.4 | N/A |
Correction of script for including X Window fonts to StarOffice 5.2
Revision 1.3 | N/A |
Minor corrections, spell checking and editation made, few more Xmodmap files added; list of what all ISO8859* specifications mean
Revision 1.2 | N/A |
Completely rebuilt, added the possibility to force the system to read Xmodmap; some national Xmodmap files added, more information included on building up the standard Xmodmap files
Revision 1.1 | N/A |
Added copyright information and slight modifications pertaining to newer systems
Revision 1.0 | 1999-08-01 |
initial version

## 1.3. Introduction

The international keyboard Xmodmap HOWTO. Copyright (C) 1999, 2002 Juraj Sipos (xvudpapc@savba.sk). Imagine you use a Linux or a BSD OS and want to write a business letter to a person that has a foreign name with a slash or diaeresis (two dots above a letter). Czech language uses signs like ů and many European languages have their special non-English characters.

This is the Xmodmap Howto, but some info on XKB is included, too. Why Xmodmap? Xmodmap is a little hackers' solution that lets you gain a complete control of a keyboard - you can map the keyboard to almost everything. You can do this with XKB, too, but it's a little dirtier way, albeit a possible one. A good idea is to keep your XKB maps clean and unmodified, so that you don't have to reinstall your Unix box. Xmodmap solution helps you map keyboard to your choice and if something goes wrong, you will be able to use standard X keyboard. Some people also like their own customized keyboard layouts and this HOWTO will explain how to achieve this.

With information in this file you can make your own customized (international) keyboard layouts without installing any additional packages. The following information will help you set up German, Spanish, Italian, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, French, Finnish, Norwegian, Estonian, Latvian, Swedish and other keyboards. You can also alternatively look at my hompage at http://www.freebsd.nfo.sk to see visual layouts of various keyboards. In case you want to install Greek, Hebrew or Russian language, follow my information and apply changes pertinent to these languages also with respect to other documentation (e.g., install Greek fonts, etc., see the Cyrilic, Hebrew, or Danish howto).

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