24th February 2013, 1 min read

Dead Keys and Compose Key

My mother uses Xubuntu, i.e., she uses Xfce. She uses a German keyboard, but wants to write e-mails with spanish accents, i.e., she needs dead keys. At first I tried to solve the problem with a change in xorg.conf, which did not work. Some Google search revealed that a couple of people had the same problem and proposed various hints for a solution. The easiest solution is, in effect, very simple: Just comment out

XKBVARIANT="nodeadkeys"

in

/etc/default/keyboard

If one does not want to change the key settings permanently one can define a compose key, e.g., the left Windows keys, to construct spanish or french accented characters with multiple key strokes, see Xfce forum: How to set XFCE4 compose key?.

setxkbmap -option compose:lwin

This can be put into

~/.xinitrc

See Linux Compose Key Sequences (dead link) for a list of compose key sequences.