{"id":213,"date":"2009-12-17T15:28:02","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T13:28:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/?p=213"},"modified":"2009-12-17T15:28:02","modified_gmt":"2009-12-17T13:28:02","slug":"remapping-the-n900-arrow-keys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/2009\/12\/17\/remapping-the-n900-arrow-keys\/","title":{"rendered":"Remapping the N900 arrow keys"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s a tip for those of you using an N900 with an English keyboard.<\/p>\n

For those who don’t know it, this is how arrow keys are arranged in (some) non-English layouts:<\/p>\n\n\n
\"N900<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

Compare to the English layout:<\/p>\n\n\n
\"N900<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

My N900 has an English keyboard, and I like it because I use the X terminal a lot so having separate keys for the arrows is good.<\/p>\n

However I miss the accents (in particular ‘ and ~) as I usually write in Portuguese and Spanish, and using the additional on-screen keyboard is not that convenient for a Jabber conversation.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, arrow keys can be re-mapped to add extra symbols by editing this file:<\/p>\n

\/usr\/share\/X11\/xkb\/symbols\/nokia_vndr\/rx-51<\/tt><\/p>\n

Just go to the end of the file and replace the ‘arrows_4btns<\/tt>‘ entry with this:<\/p>\n


\nxkb_symbols \"arrows_4btns\" {
\n key <UP> { type[Group1] = \"PC_FN_LEVEL2\", symbols[Group1] = [ Up, dead_circumflex ] };
\n key <LEFT> { type[Group1] = \"PC_FN_LEVEL2\", symbols[Group1] = [ Left, dead_acute ] };
\n key <DOWN> { type[Group1] = \"PC_FN_LEVEL2\", symbols[Group1] = [ Down, dead_tilde ] };
\n key <RGHT> { type[Group1] = \"PC_FN_LEVEL2\", symbols[Group1] = [ Right, dead_grave ] };
\n};
\n<\/tt><\/p>\n

With this, Fn+Up\/Down\/Left\/Right will produce a dead circumflex\/tilde\/acute accent\/grave accent.<\/p>\n

If you want these changes to take effect immediately just type ‘setxkbmap us<\/tt>‘.<\/p>\n

Hope you find it useful.<\/p>\n

Update 19 Dec 2009<\/b>. Since some people have asked: of course even if you only write in English or another language that doesn’t need accents, you can still add useful symbols to the arrow keys such as ‘|<\/tt>‘, ‘<<\/tt>‘ or ‘><\/tt>‘. You can use any of these keyboard layouts<\/a> as an example. See also this thread<\/a> and this other one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Update 10 Jan 2010<\/b>. The information on this post is now (in expanded form) in the Maemo wiki<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s a tip for those of you using an N900 with an English keyboard. For those who don’t know it, this is how arrow keys are arranged in (some) non-English layouts: Compare to the English layout: My N900 has an English keyboard, and I like it because I use the X terminal a lot so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10,11,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english","category-igalia","category-maemo","category-free-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.igalia.com\/berto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}