OS question intimately related to my use of Emacs

OS question intimately related to my use of Emacs

[B. T. Raven]

Hi:

I am trying to make my keyboard on Debian squeeze amd64 work for Emacs
the same as it does on the w32 build under Windows 7. I have an Xmodmap
file in my (~) /home/me subdir but sometimes it must be run multiple
times for the modkey reassignments to be seen by Emacs (loaded after
booting from the desktop menu). I think I can put the "xmodmap Xmodmap"
line into either .xinitrc or .xsession but I would rather put it in
/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc I also read about an xinitrc.d file in this
subdirectory but I'm not sure if that's used only in other distros.
Is this safe or could it cause problems? What is the canonical location
of  that line in Debian 6.0.4 64bit if I want that keyboard layout
global for all users? Does it matter if the "datafile" read by xmodmap
is called Xmodmap, .xmodmap, or something else?

Thanks,

Ed

Re: OS question intimately related to my use of Emacs

[Peter Dyballa]

Am 29.11.2012 um 02:30 schrieb B. T. Raven:

> I would rather put it in /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

This is the system's file. It will be overwritten at next system update. The same for the system's Xmodmap file. Better ask the maintainers of your distribution!

> I also read about an xinitrc.d file in this
> subdirectory but I'm not sure if that's used only in other distros.

~/xinitrc.d is a directory with files à la

	11-fontpath.sh	50-clients.sh	96-fluxbox.sh	97-blackbox.sh	98-openbox.sh	99-quartz-wm.sh	99-twm.sh

In my case I correct the X11 server's font path setting and launch the X clients. By giving one of the window managers related files the lowest numerical value I can decide which WM will launch.

If you don't know whether your X server can read ~/xinitrc.d and execute the files contained in it, you can just try…

--
Greetings

  Pete

Upgraded, adj.:
	Didn't work the first time.

Re: OS question intimately related to my use of Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> the same as it does on the w32 build under Windows 7. I have an Xmodmap
> file in my (~) /home/me subdir but sometimes it must be run multiple
> times for the modkey reassignments to be seen by Emacs (loaded after
> booting from the desktop menu). I think I can put the "xmodmap Xmodmap"

There's a big mess in this area, indeed.  I think the culprit is Gnome
(which just doesn't want to take into account the fact that the user may
have some hand-made config files), but other environments might have
similar problems.

I recommend you post a bug report about this problem (you should be
able to demonstrate the problem without Emacs by checking the output of
`xmodmap').  Either to your distribution or to the desktop environment
you're using.


        Stefan

Re: OS question intimately related to my use of Emacs

[Stefan Monnier]

> Thanks, Peter and Stefan.  I don't know whether xmodmap by itself does
> anything

You can figure that out in a few different ways:
- ask on some forum (not a very good idea).
- "man xmodmap" (good idea).
- run "xmodmap" and try to figure out what happened (you'll see it's
  pretty easy, especially if you remember that I said "… by checking the
  output of `xmodmap'").


        Stefan