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I did this by running xev to find out the keycode of the Right Alt key.

Then I added this to a file called .Xmomap in my home dir.

(Replace 108 with the keycode of the key you want to be the Compose key).

Then add this line to your .xinitrc:

And it will work once you restart X.

Or for it to take effect now, just type the command xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap in your terminal.

This is so cool:

10 * 8 / 4 = 40 becomes 10 × 8 ÷ 2 = 40

4.7uF becomes 4.7µF

3 1/2" becomes 3½"

"This is a quote" becomes “This is a quote”

2^8 becomes 2⁸

H2O becomes H₂O

Thats quite small for a capacitor ;)

Thanks for the info but it's not working for me. Used the -verbose option of xmodmap and all looked well. Used xmodmap without any arguments to print the map and all looked well. Tried entering characters in Mousepad (Xfce text editor), OpenOffice 3.1.1 (Compose+* did produce a vertical grey bar) and Firefox 3.6. :(

I have $LANG set to en_GB.UTF-8. Could that be the problem? Is anybody else using Compose with UTF-* OK?

Compose+* does not print a vertical gray bar for me either.

Try (Note that you should not do this like a key combination, just press compose, press one letter, and press the senond letter):

Compose x x
×

Compose m u
µ

Compose : -
÷

Compose s o
§

EDIT: And did you use xev to find out the keycode?

@smeezekitty

From my experience 4.7µF is a pretty average capacitor. 0.1µF ones are used very often to suppress noise from microcontrollers. They even make 1pF capacitors!

:doh: Operator error! I was using it like a shift key :redface:

You only need to mess about with xmodmap if you're not using a mainstream desktop like Gnome or KDE. Otherwise, just use the keyboard configuration tool: Gnome offers seven different places for it.

keyboa
 

Yes, it's not very hard. I have 500+ key shortcuts on my layout, but for this the usual xmodmap is not enough, so I made my own software to develop the layout: http://github.com/meingbg/keyboa

How do I get the program?

And does it create an Xmodmap, or does it have to run all the time?

Anyway, this part got me very excited — “This enables features such as letting any key act as a modifier and a symbol at the same time (e.g. pressing a gives an
a, but pressing b while holding down a gives Ctrl-b)”. That's what I wanted a long time ago!

Remembering 500 shortcuts would be challenging!

Probably keeps them all in a list on a sheet of paper or something...

You just download it from the site, instructions for installation is included.

It does not create an Xmodmap directly - you see, Xmodmap doesn't have support for a key being a modifier and a symbol at the same time. For now, it runs as a vnc proxy (native X11 support is possible and on the todo list). But as for Xmodmap - yes, the Xvnc server will automatically add any keys you use that aren't in your keymap from the beginning, you don't have to think about it.

WTF is vnc?

I keep them right in my head, actually. But I didn't just randomly memorize them. Rather, over the months, I've added new ones as I needed them (most people have no problem remembering things they actually use). For example, holding down c gives me a numpad on my right hand, holding down comma gives me F1-F12 on my left, and I have key shortcuts to switch to greek, cyrillic, qwerty and dvorak layouts. Only these examples are way over 100 mappings. But I've also gotten noticably better at remembering mappings and layouts.

"Virtual Network Computing". It's a way to connect to your desktop over the network from another, or the same, computer.

To "start" a desktop, do something like this:
sudo apt-get install vnc4server
vncserver :1 -geometry 1600x1200 #or whatever screen resolution you have.

now try to connect with
vncviewer :1 --fullscreen

If it works, you're ready to get keyboa going.