Happy to help.

Ironically enough, this doesn't work on my device, as far as I can tell. After I run the setxkbmap command it tells me "Error unable to load new keyboard" or something to that effect. I haven't been willing to risk rebooting the device after getting the error because bricking it isn't worth it, at least unless I can't find any other information on this matter.

So so far I've just restored the back-up ones and moved on. I'll probably fiddle with it some more eventually. I'm guessing it doesn't work for me because I've installed a bunch of extras devel stuff, some of which presumably interferes somehow.

Can't think of any installed apps/programs on my N900 off the top of my head that do anything with the hardware keyboard, but feasible enough.

Anyway, I'm glad it worked out for you and by extension your GF.