US International keyboard layout, but without dead keys

Bjørn · 2006-10-29 16:13:08

I wonder if I'm the only one who was using the US international layout without dead keys in the past, but at present time this simply doesn't seem to be an option. I can't remember exactly when it changed, but I guess with xorg 7 or something. Many local keyboard layouts include a "nodeadkeys" variant. However, the new us keyboard layout has "intl" and "alt-intl" as variants, and no way to exclude the dead keys.

Fortunately, after some research this seemed easy to fix. The part that needs to be modified is the us symbol component, defined in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us. As can be seen there the "intl" variant is based on the "basic" variant and adds support for typing international characters, but it also introduces several (high annoying in my opinion), dead keys in place of the otherwise directly functional keys ~, ", `, ^ and '.

The solution: Define another variant called "intl_nodeadkeys" based on the "intl" variant, which overrides these dead keys:

partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "intl_nodeadkeys" {

    name[Group1]= "U.S. English - International (without plain dead keys)";

    include "us(intl)"

    // Alphanumeric section (overriding some annoying dead keys)
    key <TLDE> { [     grave,       asciitilde ] };
    key <AE06> { [    6, asciicircum,    onequarter,      asciicircum ] };
    key <AC11> { [ apostrophe,        quotedbl ] };
};

After adding this to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us, you can test it instantly with the following command:

setxkbmap -layout "us" -variant "intl_nodeadkeys"

For the long term the configuration can be included in the xorg.conf as follows:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
        Option "XkbModel" "pc104"   # Fill in your keyboard model
        Option "XkbLayout" "us"
        Option "XkbVariant" "intl_nodeadkeys"
EndSection

I hope this helps anybody. I've spent too much time myself being frustrated with my keyboard and searching for a solution. Of course, if somebody knows of a more straightforward way, I'm all ears.

nekomata · 2011-12-05 14:33:17

I was having the same problem (dead keys don't work well with my quake terminal). Found a different solution:

setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option nodeadkeys

¹²³ öäü wööt ít wörks

Yeah I know this topic is really old. Still might help someone.

fsckd · 2011-12-05 16:42:59

Hello nekomata and welcome to the forums. We have a rule against necro-bumping which you can read at: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … Bumping.27
Closing.

Arch Linux

#1 2006-10-29 16:13:08

US International keyboard layout, but without dead keys

#2 2011-12-05 14:33:17

Re: US International keyboard layout, but without dead keys

#3 2011-12-05 16:42:59

Re: US International keyboard layout, but without dead keys

Board footer