[openbox] Setting up key bindings for extended characters

[Mark Pustjens]

On Sat, 27 Jan 2007, David Courtney wrote:

> I'm trying to learn Spanish and I'm looking for a convenient way to
> access the accented characters that are used in the Spanish language.
> I know about turning on num lock, and then holding down ALT and typing
> in a key sequence.  But ... for some reason, that's not working for me
> in X.org / Openbox ... (though it works if I'm outside of X.org).  But
> it doesn't really matter because I'm looking for something more
> convenient.
>
> I was thinking about setting up a keybind chain like CTRL+ALT, then a
> to give me á.  CTRL+ALT, then ? to give me ¿, and so on.  I can work
> out the exact key sequence on my own.
>
> My question then is concerning how to edit my rc.xml file to do what I
> want.  Obviously I would set up a keybind, and I'm even familiar with
> setting up a chain.  So I would want something like:
>
> <keybind key="C-A">
>       <keybind key="a">
>               <action name="?????"/>
>       </keybind>
> </keybind>
>
> So the exact question is, what would the action be?  How do I make the
> á character print/echo to screen upon completion of the command
> sequence?
>
> P.S. If someone has a better idea that is completely different than
> what I thought of, I'm open to suggestions.
>

Xkb is meant for this kind of thing. Eg, i have configured left shift + 
right shift to switch between greek and us keyboard layouts.

You could probably do something like this in your xinitrc:
setxkbmap -geometry "microsoft(natural)" -symbols 
"pc(pc105)+us+sp:2+group(shifts_toggle)"

Greeting,

Mark Pustjens

-- 
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