HOWTO: Enable Portuguese Keyboard Layout in Apple X11 Beta

Introduction

The XWindows Beta for , despite being less obviously configurable than XDarwin or OrobourosX, can be configured to use international keyboard layouts. This covers Portuguese, but any keyboard layout from /System/Library/Keyboards can be used.

So far, I don't know how to make these changes "cleanly" persistent (i.e., within standard preference files), but here's how to get up and running:

Commands:

Start X11.app from Terminal using:

/Applications/X11.app/Contents/MacOS/X11 -keymap /System/Library/Keyboards/Portugues.keymapping

Then, if you have an iBook like me, you might want to enable the Option key with:

xmodmap -e 'keycode 66 = Mode_switch' (or add this entry to .Xmodmap)

Notes:

X11.app respects /.xinitrc files, and quartz-wm seems to use X resources (unconfirmed).

This page is referenced in:

  • HOWTONov 18th 2006