About a year ago, I switched to Linux from MacOS. After some tinkering, I got everything set up nicely for coding, and writing. Most of my writing is in Norwegian, and I had a .Xmodmap hack to get Norwegian characters like I was used to from MacOS.

This year, I decided to a fresh install after a year of finding out how I liked my setup, and decided to change the keybindings a bit. Previously, I used Alt_L as a modifier to access the Norwegian characters, but I like using that modifier for shifting through tabs in my editor and Firefox, so I’ve decided to use the right alt-key, ISO_Level3_Shift or AltGr for accessing the Norwegian characters.

In MacOS the default bindings are:

Keys Result
Option ‘ æ
Option o ø
Option a å
Shift Option ‘ Æ
Shift Option o Ø
Shift Option a Å

So I created the following Xmodmap settings and saved to ~/.Xmodmap:

keysym apostrophe = apostrophe quotedbl apostrophe quotedbl ae AE
keysym o = o O o O oslash Oslash
keysym a = a A a A aring Aring

Each keysym column in the table corresponds to a particular combination of modifier keys:

  1. Key
  2. Shift+Key
  3. Mode_switch+Key
  4. Mode_switch+Shift+Key
  5. ISO_Level3_Shift+Key
  6. ISO_Level3_Shift+Shift+Key

For more details of Xmodmap, check out the Arch wiki on xmodmap.