Keyboard layout reconfiguration

I’m regularly writing in three languages (English mainly, but also German and occasionally French) so over the years I’ve got into the habit of using my own keyboard layout, replacing the little-used brackets etc with the most common accented characters on a standard US keyboard. That’s easy to do in Windows but I want to do it in Linux (Gnome). I’m sure I could dig around the bowels of the system files and do it manually in a text editor but that’s risky, so I wondered if anyone knows of a GUI utility to make it easier?

I think that

xmodmap -e 'keycode <value>=<action>

may be what you want.

Check man xmodmap. Also this link may help:

Remapping Keys Under Linux

Very helpful, thanks. Not quite GUI but I’ll get there eventually. I was hoping someone knew of a nifty utility where you get a graphical representation of the present layout and then just click and drag characters onto keys… Always the optimist!

Ditto. Would like this very much!

There are some packages that deal with multimedia keys, so they may be of use to you:

lineak (that’s in the 11.0 DVD): http://lineak.sourceforge.net/index.php?nav=screenshots

hotkey-setup (in packman) is a script to help set up mm keys

Once upon a time there was also an app called khotkeys. I think it’s dead.

I also vaguely remember another app (with a pretty GUI) to remap all your kb, but ATM I can’t remember it’s name, if I do I’ll post here. I do remember it was not very easy to use, however.

More info on xmodmap here: SDB:Using the Extra Keys on the Keyboard - openSUSE

It’s old but worked on my lappie running OS 11.0.

I followed the steps in this article, Linux.com :: Customize your laptop keyboard with X and KDE, and the method for alternative characters given for OS 10.2 still works for me with OS 11.0 and KDE 3.5.9

Good reference, thanks.

Does it work with Gnome?
Thanks for all the suggestions, investigating them one by one…

I just installed a MS natural keyboard 4000… I was having troubles trying to get the MM keys to work etc… (the volume up and down, and mute keys are pretty useful for me) This particular keyboard is supposed to be supported natively in 11.1, and a keyboard profile does exist for it… but when I select it, the MM keys dont work… I tested some of the other keyboard maps and found that the ‘Natural Multimedia Keyboard’ profile seemed to mostly work… some things didnt exactly… I began digging around the internet to figure out what do do about the special keys (and found this thread). I found a great program that totally fixed my problems - Keytouch. I found it in the packman repository… It is very easy and allowed me to configure the few keys that werent working correctly… Amd it has a bunch of plugins for different apps… I hope this helps someone else who is trying to solve this same issue…