[SOLVED] 2 keyboard layouts in xorg.conf goes bananas....

[rytmisk]

Now I am really confused. I have finally come around to installing ubuntu hardy on my macbook santa rosa and am in the process of configuring it. I need to use something other than gnome (because gnome handles windows strangely on a program I am depandant on), and I like icewm better anyway. One problem of not using gnome or kde is the lack of a proper keyboard switcher applet so I had to do it in xorg.conf.

Well I googled a lot and ended up with the following section in xorg.conf:Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "se, no"
Option "XkbVariant" "mac"
Option "XkbOptions" "grp:alt_shift_toggle" ##<-- Enables Alt+Shift

EndSection

I also added fbxkb to be abke to switch graphically as well as with keyboard. And it works - except tat the second language is garbled. In the above version of xorg.conf Swedish is working perfectly, but when I switch to Norwegian some of the keys give different letters/symbols. I think they might be third level letters. the top row of letters which should be "qwertyuiopå" is "@ł€®þ←↓→œþ¨"

The strange thing is that if I write "no" before "se" in the xorg.conf file,

Option "XkbLayout" " no, se" it is Swedish that is screwed up... The difference between the keyboard layouts are minor really, but there are 2 letters that are different, and these work - but this is useless since I have to switch keyboard layout from one letter to the next...

Does anyone have any idea of how to fix this??

Best regards
Ketil Thorgersen

[cyberdork33]

I can't help directly, but I wanted to mention that gnome is not a window manager... you can use the gome environment with icewm as the window manager I think... By default gnome uses metacity as the window manager, but you can change that to icewm just like to change to compiz if you use that.

[rytmisk]

Hm

I actually hadn't thought about that. I really do not want to go back to gnome, but if I can't solve this, I might give it a try.

Thanks!
Ketil

[rytmisk]

Please someone???

Ketil

[rytmisk]

Ok - I kind of fixed it. Through a workaround as usual...

I found a thread (http://ubuntu.sabza.org/2006/10/13/xubuntu-easily-switch-keyboard-layout/) which explained another way of switching between keyboard layouts by making an executable file /usr/bin/fixkeyboard containing the following code#!/bin/bash
setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:alts_toggle se,no
I put it in my ˝/icewm/startup file after my ~.xmodmap (if the xmodmap is run after the fixkeyboard it won't work). I am now happily changing between the keyboard layouts with alt+shift. fbxkb - the gui changer from xfce is unfortunately not working though.

So not solved, but working:-)

Ketil

[cyberdork33]

Please use the "thread tools" menu at the top to mark as solved.