[SOLVED] using left alt as control

caminoix · 2008-02-02 20:38:18

hello

i've been using arch simultaneously with a mac for some time now and grew a bit tired of having to mentally switch between pressing ctrl (the first key from left) and cmd (the third key from left) every time i try to work on the other computer.
i thought it would be simple enough to remap the keys in arch. i already have some homemade keyboard layouts which work fine, and i thought i'd just add the ctrl mapping:

key <LWIN> { symbols[Group1]= [ Alt_L ] };
key <LALT> { symbols[Group1]= [ Control_L ] };
modifier_map Control { <LALT> };

sadly, it doesn't work. i've played with it a bit just to find that right alt, tilde and some other keys work ok as control - left alt does not.
lwin seems to work properly as lalt.
i've tried some other modifier keys (caps, shift &c.), too, and everything seems to be just fine. except for the lctrl -> lalt.

by the way i also discovered that my keyboard works exactly the same regardless of what geometry i set it as.

in case this is of any importance, i'm using arch64 2.6.23 with kde 3.5.8, and my keyboard is standard pc 104 keys.

could you please help me?

Last edited by caminoix (2008-02-12 20:08:34)

jbromley · 2008-02-06 09:04:26

I assume you are using Xorg. Perhaps instead of making a keyboard map you could just use xmodmap on an .Xmodmap file that look likes the following:

remove mod1 = Alt_L
add control = Alt_L
remove control = Control_L
add mod1 = Control_L

For me this switches the left alt and control keys. I do not use a desktop environment, so if you use one of those you may have to be careful not to interfere with your DE's mapping facilities. E.g. xmodmap and switching keyboard layouts (for languages) in KDE does not work too well.

Good luck.
j

caminoix · 2008-02-12 20:08:12

thank you! i appreciate your help but i'm afraid this solution doesn't work for me. perhaps it's me configuring something wrong but it seems that xmodmap stops working every time i switch the keyboard layout. unfortunately, i do that quite a lot. i'm a linguist, and squeezing lots of latin diacritics + cyrillic + arabic + occasional greek or hebrew goes quite a way beyond comfortable access.

anyhow, i've managed to figure out myself (somewhat accidentally, to be honest) what the proper xkb symbols definition looks like:

key <LALT> { [ Control_L, Control_L ] };
modifier_map Control { <LALT> };

thanks again!

jbromley · 2008-02-12 23:35:02

What desktop environment are you using? What you mention happens when using xmodmap with KDE's built in keyboard switcher. It may happen with GNOME too. I don't know about this because I don't use GNOME. Anyway, I write in a variety of languages and to solve that problem when I used to use KDE, I configured my layouts in xorg.conf's keyboard section and then used kkbswitch to switch between languages instead of using KDE's built-in layout manager from the Control Center. That way worked even with xmodmap. Apparently KDE's keyboard layout manager does not handle custom .Xmodmaps correctly.

Hope this maybe helps out.

Regards,
j

Edit: oops, didn't read that you fixed it, never mind then.

Last edited by jbromley (2008-02-12 23:35:32)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-02 20:38:18

[SOLVED] using left alt as control

#2 2008-02-06 09:04:26

Re: [SOLVED] using left alt as control

#3 2008-02-12 20:08:12

Re: [SOLVED] using left alt as control

#4 2008-02-12 23:35:02

Re: [SOLVED] using left alt as control

Board footer