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Extra typographic characters with 3rd level chooser key

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mef
Posts: 27
Joined: 2017-04-14 13:42

Extra typographic characters with 3rd level chooser key

#1 Post by mef »

Hello everyone. I'm new to Debian and to Linux as well. Previous distributions that I have used were Ubuntu and Kubuntu. Both allowed to set a key to choose 3rd level characters and enable "extra typographic characters" in keyboard settings. Now I've installed Debian (Jessie) with LXDE, and can't find a way to set up this behavior. I've looked for solutions on the internet, but other than setting

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XKBOPTIONS="lv3:ralt_switch"
in /etc/default/keyboard or

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setxkbmap -option lv3:ralt_switch
in the terminal nothing can be found.
Even these options don't let me enter extra typographic characters.
How can I achieve it?

User avatar
debiman
Posts: 3063
Joined: 2013-03-12 07:18

Re: Extra typographic characters with 3rd level chooser key

#2 Post by debiman »

i'm not quite sure i understood correctly; why are the above commands not satisfactory? do they not achieve what you want?

PS:
i like the implication that ubuntu is not linux. :wink:

mef
Posts: 27
Joined: 2017-04-14 13:42

Re: Extra typographic characters with 3rd level chooser key

#3 Post by mef »

I guess, these commands set th 3rd level chooser, but to achieve my goal I need to also change the layout to one with special typography characters enabled. Because now when I type letters with Right Alt pressed i get those same letters and not special characters. Isn't there a special "en" layout with typography symbols (maybe something like that is used in Ubuntu)? Or maybe there's a way to create my own layout with the symbols that I need (modify the default layout)?

mef
Posts: 27
Joined: 2017-04-14 13:42

Re: Extra typographic characters with 3rd level chooser key

#4 Post by mef »

Well, I've come up with a solution that works. At least for now, I don't know, maybe it could potentially damage my installation (that would be a pity).

For those who are interested, here's my solution.
1. Edit the file /etc/default/keyboard so that the XKBOPTIONS include lv3:ralt_switch and misc:typo. Mine looks like this:

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XKBOPTIONS="grp:alt_shift_toggle,lv3:ralt_switch,misc:typo"
2. Place into /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols directory the file "typo", which inludes Typographic Keyboard Layout by Sergei Stolyarov, which I took from the Kubuntu distribution (you can extract it yourself, download and run a LiveCD, then copy it out of /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols, I am not allowed to attach it here).
3. Reboot.

It works for me. I can enter symbols like ™ (ralt+t), © (ralt+c), ←(ralt+(), — (ralt+-), etc.
This is the only feature that I missed in my Debian-LXDE installation. Now I'm happy and ready to use it as my primary OS.
I would appreciate any feedback, I'm worried that I could screw up my installation with this setup. :roll:

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