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From: mouse@lightning.mcrcim.mcgill.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re:  8-bit characters, or is xmodmap stupid?
Message-ID: <9102160510.AA25780@lightning.McRCIM.McGill.EDU>
Date: 16 Feb 91 05:10:19 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 45

> I want 8-bits keyboard, but I don't want to remember what character
> generates with the eigth bit set.

You don't say what flavor of X you're using.  My reply is written based
on R4 information; I don't know what, if anything, R3 has to address
this issue.

> Can I map the Meta key and '[' to 0xc4, but still keep '[' and '{' on
> the same key (without meta)?

Probably not.  Meta is not the intended way to deal with this.

You should probably use either the compose mechanisms or simply xmodmap
Adiaeresis to somewhere on your keyboard.

> Looking at xmodmap tells me that I can only have two keysyms to a
> key.

Then something's broken.  You should have an effectively unlimited
number of keysyms per key, though only the first four have standardized
interpretations.

What it sounds as though you're trying to do is what the Mode_switch
keysym is for.  The way this works is that you use xmodmap to set some
key on your keyboard to the Mode_switch keysym and tie one of the mod1
through mod5 modifier bits to the Mode_switch keysym.  Then, when this
key is down, the third and fourth columns of the xmodmap table will be
used instead of the first and second.  (If a given key doesn't have
anything in the third and fourth columns, the first two columns are
still used for that key.)

This is derived from the precise description early in section 5
("Keyboards") of the protocol document.  If you don't have the protocol
document, I can mail you the relevant snippet....

> (Or should I reread the manual? :-)

Only if you have the proper manual, that being the protocol document.
(The Xlib document mentions this under XLookupString, but only to refer
you to the protocol document.)

					der Mouse

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