From: pk@pk.pk   
      
   Aragorn wrote:   
      
   >> $ zcat /usr/share/keymaps/i386/include/euro.map.gz   
   >> # Euro and cent   
   >> # [Say: "loadkeys euro" to get Euro and cent with Alt on the positions   
   >> #  where many keyboards have E and C.   
   >> #  To get it displayed, use a latin0 (i.e., latin9) font.]   
   >> alt keycode  18 = currency   
   >> alt keycode  46 = cent   
   >   
   > I suppose that UTF-8 will cover those too?   
      
   AFAIK, UTF-8 is only part of the story.   
   UTF-8 cannot know which symbol to associate to which keybord scancode (of   
   course), and this is what keymap files do. So you need both UTF-8 (to   
   support multibyte characters) /and/ an appropriate keymap for your   
   keyboard.   
   Again, keymaps are for console only, not X window.   
      
   >> In my experience, using "backspace" in EXTRA_KEYMAPS is useless, since   
   >> most keymaps already define that key themselves.   
   >   
   > This was what confused me, as most keyboards for what is generally   
   > considered "the PC architecture" nowadays are of the "extended" type, and   
   > I've never seen a keyboard, extended or otherwise, that didn't have a   
   > backspace key.   
      
   I didn't mean that. IIRC, the problem in the past was that, while the   
   backspace key was indeed present in many keyboard, by default it had an   
   incorrect mapping (eg it was mapped to DEL). The additional "backspace"   
   keymap was meant to map the backspace key (keycode 14) to ^H:   
      
   $ zcat /usr/share/keymaps/i386/include/backspace.map.gz   
   keycode  14 = Control_h           Control_h   
          alt     keycode  14 = Meta_Control_h   
      
   If you want a bit of historical background on the backspace/delete madness   
   under linux, read the "Linux backspace/delete mini-HOWTO".   
      
   However, I have noticed that nowadays, while many popular keymaps insist on   
   defining keycode 14 as "Delete", the backspace and delete keys work   
   correctly nonetheless, without the need to load the "backspace" additional   
   keymap (I did not dig deeper to find out why, however; I'm just satisfied   
   with the way it works, and I don't use the console a lot anyway).   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)