Re: how to make the pause key switch keyboard variants?

From: Winston <wbe@UBEBLOCK.psr.com.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.windows.x
Subject: Re: how to make the pause key switch keyboard variants?
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Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2025 08:41:39 -0400
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Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> posted:

I wish I could toggle the variant using the pause key and not the
menu key as it is currently set on my OpenBSD system---see below.

to which I replied:

I'm not sure, but this sounds more like something xmodmap(1) would
do.  man xmodmap.

Later, Salvador Mirzo <smirzo@example.com> replied:

Thanks.  I was able to get it to work.  I used xev to figure out what
was the keycode of pause and the menu key.  I discovered that the pause
key issues the keycode 135 when pressed, and menu key, keycode 117.  So
the following commands disable the menu key and makes the pause key
behave like the menu key:
>
xmodmap -e 'keycode 135 = ISO_Next_Group'
xmodmap -e 'keycode 117 = VoidSymbol'
>
Now, what I'm puzzled about is that I add these commands to .xsession,
which I'm positive that xenodm runs when I log in, but it takes no
effect.

Try this and see if it helps...

1) Create a file (e.g., .xmodmaprc, but there's nothing special about
   the name) with the relevant remove/keysym/keycode/add commands.
   This is for step 2.

2) Once X and some xterm is running, run xmodmap .xmodmaprc again,
   maybe even twice.

ISTM there's some sort of bug with xmodmap, and either I've always done
something wrong or the bug's been there for years.  Even though I run
xmodmap during startup, half the changes don't happen (and half do).
I have to run xmodmap twice after startup to get things right.

Another puzzling thing that's going on here, which might be totally
unrelated, is that my Firefox stopped translating 'c into ç.  The
toggle to make this translation happen is the environment variable
>
  GTK_IM_MODULE=cedilla

Sorry, not something I know about.  Maybe someone else can help with
that.
 -WBE