I'm in Ireland and want a better keymap. Can I find a listing of what the various layouts contain anywhere, so I can adopt a less irritating approach than 'suck it and see?'

Last go I had, I farted about with keymaps and settled for what I thought was the best of a bad lot, without testing too exhaustively. It's not the letters that bother me, but the Unicode characters.

I need €, º(as in 100º), as many basic math symbols as possible. I also need the 'cent' sign,¸(Alt_Gr_c gives me nothing; 2 consecutive 'Alt_Gr_c' gives me the French cedilla).
I want an Irish 'fada'(=French acute accent) on the vowels. I kinda need the Greek u (=Electronics symbol for 'micro' as in 10^-6). I know about Xmodmap, but it's a pain to go and write one.

You have two ways of getting special characters: with the Third Level Shift (aka AltGr) and with the Compose key. Your keyboard configuration tool will enable you so nominate a key for Compose — I suggest the Windows Menu key, which is useless for anything else. To use the Compose key, press, release, and then enter the compose sequence. If you then enable a UK keyboard, you have
€ AltGr + 4
¢ AltGr + c
µ AltGr + m
º Comp o _
á Comp ' a
and the same for other vowels, or else you can get a dead acute from AltGr + ;

You can customise the layout in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/gb to enable long vowels to be typed directly with AltGr, with entries like
key <AC01> {[ a, A, á, Á ]};
key <AD03> {[ e, E, é, É ]};
and so on, which will give you á from AltGr+a and Á from AltGr+Sh+a. u, i, and o are <AD07> to <AD09>.

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This looks the business for me. Compose as the windows key is about the only thing I can do with one hand. had a look at the keymap options and I'm on about the best, Thanks.

You can also use Compose sequences for the other things, if more convenient: |c for ¢, =c for €, mu for µ.

Thanks, David. This worked out this way.

The keyboard setting tool is a bit useless in XFCE. I defined windows key as compose, but it can't/won't give any recognition to the compose tool. I'm working on the Irish layout in /usr/share/…, as the best of a bad lot. It has lines like As I understand it, they should be the keystrokes for the c, Shift+c, Alt_Gr+c, & Compose+c - am I right? I get c, C, ¸(2nd Alt_gr+c), & c .

EDIT: Found some symbols by grep-ing and less-ing other language files. I should be able to roll something for myself.

The easy way forward is to hack this file to say the correct thing using the first three keystrokes. Only I don't always know the correct thing (for the Greek u as the math symbol for micro, for example).
In addition this keyfile has a whole load of OGHAM letters defined which largely don't appear. You're supposed to get them with Caps lock, but no dice.

EDIT: I gather the fourth defined letter is actually Alt_gr+Shift, not hugely useful with one hand . There's provision for the old Cló Gaelach (I'll spare you the pronunciation of that). It was phased out in the 1960s.

There is
From xterm
Edit: This shows up ok with palemoon. I don't have any special fonts installed.

@teckk: Very good, thanks. I also found them nearly all at /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/gr.

I hacked the ie keyboard layout to get most of what I wanted into somewhere I could use it. It's a weird one, catering for

1. English Unicode with € sign
2. Cló Románach(= The Irish post 1960s writing script).
3. Cló Gaelach (The Irish pre-1960s script).

The script was changed to facilitate the use of English typewriters, but that didn't wash with Irish enthusiasts. Ogham is, I gather the original Gaelic script. I can read both, as I was thought one & then the other, just as I learned Imperial & Metric systems. We're good at changing our minds here and then lashing out at kids who can't keep up :-/.
The XFCE use of compose and deadkeys seems teetotally non operational. I can't get either to function, so accents under/over letters don't work - period. I do have useful math stuff – useful for Electronics guys, not physicists, and it strains the limits of unicode fonts. Things like € & ¢, α,ð,Ð,Σ,Π,μ,÷,×,¼,½,¾,‰(/1000), and I can get some others. I'll keep the original as backup. I have not been able to get the squared or cubed sign on a single letter. I do have squareroot as in (√-1). A difficulty s that all the vowels are committed to Irish compatibility. So I'll find spots for anything else I need. It's a start. Mind you, Electronics guys use j instead of i for √-1, as in Electronics shorthand I ( and therefore i)=current.

EDIT: Getting good at this. Added Δ & π, slightly better than δ & Π. I'll have to get the Irish side of it going sometime…

Since you use Slackware, I have no idea how you set up Compose, but if there's no GUI tool or it doesn't work, see this
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ng-4175445217/

Nice One! What's the 'Menu' key anyhow? I'm only right-handed atm.

I had another idea altogether, In Libreoffice, there's <Insert/Special Character> and they show characters, along with the relevant Unicode number,or it can be uncovered in some way iirc. I can get to that and harvest those Unicode numbers.

The "Menu key", a Windows name, is the one between the right Super (aka Windows) and the right Control.

Oh, that thing. Thanks.

And I finally figured the dead keys. You just have to know that they're there, but dead. For instance, Alt_Gr+vowel gives me áéíóú. But I'd like access to a French 'grave' accent, tilted the other way. It's on the '\' key as dead_grave. To get it, I press Alt_Gr+\ followed by the vowel. Nothing appears 1st keypress; 2nd keypress, they both appear.
àèìòù I can also do the Spanish n, as in Manyaña. (The LQ spell checker is in revolt). I also have squared & cubed,if I stretch for them πR²h for the volume of a circle, or πR³ for the volume of a cube.

Who knows when, but I'll get to the bottom of this Irish keymap. I have yet to install Ogham fonts - I'll post again in Ogham - maybe.

EDIT: I reached for Ogham fonts and it seems the Irish fonts are for this script made with a hammer & chisel only. No wonder the Romans skipped conquering the place. And no wonder they fell for St Patrick and became Catholics when he came here in 432A.D. he could write! And they could keep their pagan nonsense too!
Anyhow, I grabbed a Gaelic font, and discovered the dead_abovedot already configured on my keyboard. Gaelic uses a smaller alphabet with the acute on vowels, and a dot above consonants. The alphabet is only
abcdefghilmnoprstu, and I can do dead abovedots where it matters. Only these letters get can dead_abovedots
aḃċḋeḟġhilṁnoṗrṡṫu. In the Cló Gaelach (Irish font) that will look fabulous.

I called "that thing" the beehive key when I first saw it, never having used Windows. I should have explained "dead key" too, but I just assumed that everyone knew what it meant — that comes from having grown up in typewriter days.

Ogham is strictly for writing up the edge of your tombstone, but I've always liked the Gaelic script.

I won't have a tombstone, and will leave forbidding instructions on what to put on it.

To business: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hg...uSjq8JsePE17-r

That's a link to a libreoffice doc with some Gaelic fonts. The format is

small letters...........LARGE LETTERS
small (accented)........LARGE (ACCENTED)

You will notice some letters don't take an accent. Some of the fonts are truly crap. And the dead_abovedot gives me a distinctly Roman looking font - the same font, if I'm not mistaken. I'll have to try to fix that. The dot over a letter has the effect of softening the letter, but the font shouldn't change.

EDIT: The best epitaph was undoubtedly Spike Milligan's:

Further on this, I've examined this:

The Irish keyboard layout uses things like gabovedot, or Gabovedot for the layout, and I'm convinced they're messing with the font the abovedot appears on. Even with a font like Guthenberg, which is a joined-type writing font, you get these plain letters with a tiny dots above them. Irish had low sections on all accentable consonants, but the sort of thing I can get is this: Ġ,ġ,ċ - very out-of-place Romanesque but plain letters, whereas you write Irish with a calligraphy pen. The Gaelic.ttf font is the best I've found.