xmodmap Oddness

[Giles Orr]

On Tue, Feb 26, 2008 at 4:14 PM, William O'Higgins Witteman
<william.ohiggins-H217xnMUJC0sA/PxXw9srA at public.gmane.org> wrote:
>  Ordinarily, I just fire up xev to get the keycode and then `xmodmap -e
>  "keycode 64 = Control_L"`.  And that has worked for all of my keys but
>  one - my Alt_L (keycode 64).  I was trying to remap it to Control_L, but
>  it is staying subbornly Alt_L.
>
>  Here's the output of xev for my uncooperative keyboard:
>
>  KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1800001,
>     root 0x63, subw 0x1800002, time 1468606840, (37,48), root:(1538,917),
>     state 0x10, keycode 37 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
>     XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XFilterEvent returns: False
>
>  KeyPress event, serial 32, synthetic NO, window 0x1800001,
>     root 0x63, subw 0x1800002, time 1468618977, (37,48), root:(1538,917),
>     state 0x10, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
>     XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 37
>     XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
>     XFilterEvent returns: False
>
>  The top key is working as expected, but the bottom one, which is the one
>  I'd like to have actually be the Control_L, is claiming to be Control_L,
>  as I remapped it, but when I press it is still actually Alt_L.  The only
>  difference I see is that the one that doesn't do what I'd like has a
>  keysym remap.  Given I put it there, that's not a huge surprise, but I
>  am not sure what I should do.

I was struggling with keymapping recently, sounds like a fairly
similar problem.  I was trying to get Alt_R - which by default is
mapped to AltGr, which I have no use for - to behave in the same way
as Alt_L.  I tried this:

   xmodmap -e "keycode 113 = Alt_R"

Good start, associating the keycode with a name.  As you did, I got
the keycode from xev.  Next:

   xmodmap -e "add Mod1 = Alt_R"

I thought that would do it, but it didn't because Alt_R was still
associated with Mod5 _as well as_ Mod1.  This is where I really needed
"xmodmap" without params to see what was going on - and why a keypress
wasn't giving the response I expected.  So to finish it:

   xmodmap -e "remove Mod5 = Alt_R"

Hope this helps.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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