local xkb layouts

[Stefan Witzel]

Am 05.01.2011 16:32, schrieb Dirk Wallenstein:
> On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 02:41:16PM +0100, Stefan Witzel wrote:
>> is it possible to extend the system-wide xkb layout database by
>> user-specific files. And if not: why is that?
>> I ran into this problem because I want a german
>> "deadgraveacutecircum"-layout in which grave acute and circumflex are
>> dead but tilde is not. But on systems where I am not administrator I
>> cannot install this. And even on systems where I am administrator I
>> would have to renew my changes after every upgrade.
>> Would the "right" way to do it be to use the standard layout (with dead
>> tilde) and then use a .Xmodmap? Every time I tried that I got strange
>> effects when switching between multiple xkb layouts.
>> Thanks in advance for any help!
>
> If you know how to edit XKB keymaps and only need one specific
> keymap for yourself, I would suggest to simply load the wanted keymap
> with xkbcomp at startup.  I do that in the KDE autostart folder.

This sounds like a good idea but apparently I got something wrong. I 
created a file my_keymap which looks as follows:

xkb_keymap "de" {
     xkb_keycodes        { include "xfree86"             };
     xkb_types           { include "default"             };
     xkb_compatibility   { include "default"             };
     xkb_symbols
     {
         include "pc(pc105)+de(basic)"
         name[Group1]="Germany - Dead grave acute circumfex";

         key <AD12>  { [      plus,   asterisk,   asciitilde, 
dead_macron ] };
         key <BKSL>  { [numbersign, apostrophe,        grave, 
grave ] };
     };
     xkb_geometry        { include "pc(pc102)"           };
};

When I now do "xkbcomp my_keymap :0.0" the X server crashes. I also 
tried to put the symbols in a separate symbols file (so as to add them 
to the existing symbols rather than replacing those), but I could not 
get him to find that file. I admit that I do not really understand the 
entire mechanism but I didn't find much documentation of it either.

Best,
Stefan