German Umlauts on US Keyboard in X (Ubuntu 10.04)

The US keyboard layout is better for programmers since many of the needed special chars like brackets, semicolons and so on are easier to type than, for example, with the German keyboard layout which I used so far. Since I am programming a lot on my notebook I decided to buy a new keyboard with the US layout to make it easier to learn using the US layout.

Besides programming I often write German documentations, mails and other kinds of texts. When writing things in German the umlaut chars like ä, ö and so on are important. So I would miss these chars a lot when using the US keyboard layout. In fact there are some key combinations in linux and/or X11 to type those chars but they way too complicated to be used while writing a longer text.

After some research I found a solution by using the user specific Xmodmap file. See how I modified that configuration file to fit my needs…

xmodmap is used to the keyboard modifier map and keymap table in X11 to convert event keycodes into keysyms. The file ~/.Xmodmap is the xmodmap configuration file for defining user specific key mappings. So this is the best place for me to define the mappings of the umlaut keys.

With the configuration snippet below I tell xmodmap several things:

• Add the Mode_switch to my right ALT key.
• Add the euro-sign (€) to third level of the E-Key
• Add the cent-sign (¢) to third level of the C-Key
• Add the lower and upper a-umlaut (ä) to third level of the A-Key
• Add the lower and upper o (ö) to third level of the O-Key
• Add the lower and upper u (ü) to third level of the U-Key
• Add the sharp s (ß) to third level of the S-Key

! Map umlauts to RIGHT ALT + <key>
keycode 108 = Mode_switch
keysym e = e E EuroSign
keysym c = c C cent
keysym a = a A adiaeresis Adiaeresis
keysym o = o O odiaeresis Odiaeresis
keysym u = u U udiaeresis Udiaeresis
keysym s = s S ssharp

After appending the code above to the ~/.Xmodmap file I executed the following command as user to test my new personal xmodmap:

lm@Klappspaten:~
> xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

With this configuration loaded I can hit the right ALT key plus the mapped key to type one of the umlaut chars. So easy…

Btw. I use the following to disable the most useless key I can expect: capslock

! disable capslock
remove Lock = Caps_Lock