I occasionally have to use the Spanish inverted question mark in
my emails. In order to be able to do that with my US keyboard in my
Slackware 15.0 Xfce desktop, I have an .xmodmaprc file in my home
directory containing the following line:

keycode 134 = Multi_key

which defines the right Windows key (between Alt and the other Windows-
like key) to be the Compose key.

After invoking

$ xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc

from a terminal, in 14.2 I was able to obtain the inverted question mark
as follows:

1) Press and release the Compose key.
2) Press and release '?' - i.e. SHIFT and ? at the same time.
3) Press and release '?'.

This does not seem to work under 15.0 any longer - when I try it I get

������

This seems to be so everywhere: terminal emulator, Thunderbird, browser,
etc.

Anybody know how to get, under 15.0, the behavior I used to get
under 14.2?

On Thu, 17 Mar 2022 15:56:26 +0000, James H. Markowitz wrote:

> I occasionally have to use the Spanish inverted question mark in my
> emails. In order to be able to do that with my US keyboard in my
> Slackware 15.0 Xfce desktop, I have an .xmodmaprc file in my home
> directory containing the following line:
>
> keycode 134 = Multi_key
>
> which defines the right Windows key (between Alt and the other Windows-
> like key) to be the Compose key.
>
> After invoking
>
> $ xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc
>
> from a terminal, in 14.2 I was able to obtain the inverted question mark
> as follows:
>
> 1) Press and release the Compose key.
> 2) Press and release '?' - i.e. SHIFT and ? at the same time. 3)
Press
> and release '?'.
>
> This does not seem to work under 15.0 any longer - when I try it I get
>
> ������
>
> This seems to be so everywhere: terminal emulator, Thunderbird, browser,
> etc.
>
> Anybody know how to get, under 15.0, the behavior I used to get
> under 14.2?

I don't use spanish letters myself, but during the years I have used
xmodmap with a swedish keyboard.

Defining the Multi_key in itself will not be enough to get special
characters. You will also have to use xmodmap to tell how some key should
be modified with the Multi_key.

The command

xmodmap -pke | grep Multi_

gives the following output on my system:

keycode 134 = Multi_key Multi_key Multi_key Multi_key

and the command

xmodmap -pke | grep -i quest

gives the following output on my system:

keycode 20 = plus question plus question backslash questiondown backslash

My guess is that the output from the latest command on your working 14.2
system is what you want to achive on your 15.0 system.

regards Henrik

On 2022-03-17, James H. Markowitz <noone@nowhere.net> wrote:
> I occasionally have to use the Spanish inverted question mark in
> my emails. In order to be able to do that with my US keyboard in my
> Slackware 15.0 Xfce desktop, I have an .xmodmaprc file in my home
> directory containing the following line:
>
> keycode 134 = Multi_key
>
> which defines the right Windows key (between Alt and the other Windows-
> like key) to be the Compose key.
>
> After invoking
>
> $ xmodmap ~/.xmodmaprc
>
> from a terminal, in 14.2 I was able to obtain the inverted question mark
> as follows:
>
> 1) Press and release the Compose key.
> 2) Press and release '?' - i.e. SHIFT and ? at the same time.
> 3) Press and release '?'.
>
> This does not seem to work under 15.0 any longer - when I try it I get
>
> ������
>
> This seems to be so everywhere: terminal emulator, Thunderbird, browser,
> etc.
>
> Anybody know how to get, under 15.0, the behavior I used to get
> under 14.2?

I use:

setkxbmap us -option ctrl:swapcaps -option compose:menu

as a command to start on login in my xfce session.

The first option swaps ctrl with caps lock, useful to
not harm your fingers.
The second one maps the 'menu' key on some laptops
as the compose key.

You can use compose:rwin to use the right windows key as
your compose key. Then, you just press that keys and then '?'
twice to get '¿'.