Xephyr keyboard layout

Question

For some reason Xephyr interprets the Alt Gr key as Return. Therefore I cannot enter special characters that need Alt Gr. Also other non alphanumerical keys seem to be messed up.

I start Xephyr with this command:

Xephyr :1.0 -query localhost -host-cursor -screen 1280x960 -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=evdev,xkblayout=de

I couldn't find an explanation of the -keybd option. The values I use I guessed from an example I found somewhere in the web.

I have a Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000 v1.0 and use Fedora Linux 14 x86_64 with KDE.

Answer 1

I have also spent some time trying to figure out those options. I have succeeded configuring it properly with the help of the setxkbmap tool and some guessing:

$ setxkbmap -query  
rules:      evdev  
model:      pc105  
layout:     de  
options:    grp:alts_toggle  
$ Xephyr -keybd ephyr,,,xkbmodel=pc105,xkblayout=de,xkbrules=evdev,xkboption=grp:alts_toogle -ac -reset -screen 1672x1022 -retro :50 &

The man setxkbmap page also provides a hint about where to find more configurations:

/usr/share/X11/xkb

Take a look into this directory, specially into this file, if using xorg:

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst

Answer 2

I had a similar problem using Xnest. My solution was to start an Xnest-Server

    Xnest -ac :1 -geometry 1270x760

direct an xterm into it

    xterm -display :1

and then execute

    setxkbmap -layout de

in the xterm.

Maybe this last line solves your problem too.

Answer 3

Faced with the same problem, but using $ setxkbmap -query and then use them in -keybd didn't help. Tried also copy all display settings with xkbcomp :1 :2 which crashes Xephyr.

Found one simple workaround: I noticed that the first language in "Region & Language" -> "Input Sources" is actually used within Xephyr window no matter what xkblayout equals to. So, just by changing order of languages I solved my problem.