Hello guys,
Im following the maemo community for a while now, but never made an account to post anything, till now.
I would like to ask some help of the pro's with adding/remapping 3 letters to my n900 keyboard. Ive been searching for hours and hours on google and the maemo community, but cant seem to mange to do it myself.

My case is the following; Im pretty sure that I have a n900 with English layout, i bought it in the Netherlands (qwerty, 4 arrows). My girlfriend lives in sweden, and so i would like to write swedish with her. But to make the ä ö and å, i have to go to symbols and combine the letters manually each time. Now i read that its possible to add these letters to the arrow buttons with the fn + arrow, which would be perfect to me!

As long as i can come in the rx-51 file, i think that i will know how to add the function to my arrows, but the problem is that i have no idea how to enter that file..I tried stuff with roosh and sudo, but i cant seem to manage it

I would like to have the following setup:
fn + up arrow = å
fn + left arrow = ö
fn + down arrow = ä

It would be great if someone could help me out by giving me a push in the back to enter the correct rx-51
or by giving me a pre-edited file with this setup + flash guide to make that work.
Any help would be appriciated!

I hope you could help a desperate guy out

thanks in advance!


edit: i hope that i posted this in the right tread, else pls move and forgive me..

I'd love to know this too!

Hmm..Just couple of days ago I remapped my scandic layout(fin) to have arrows. Just read maemo wiki and read that file thought and everything was pretty self explanatory.

Let´s search for wiki entry.

.edit
http://wiki.maemo.org/Remapping_keyboard
here is something that also come up from allmightygoogle
http://blogs.igalia.com/berto/2009/1...00-arrow-keys/

Thanks for your fast reaction slender,
Ive seen those websites before, but they only tell that you have to that certain file. I know that. but i dont know how to get in/open that file!

If i typ in that directory:
/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/rx-51
then i get "permission denied"
even while in root acces with the sudo gainroot command..

I feel like all of you failed to note exactly what the OP was confused about. Namely, how to actually EDIT the file (the only thing that logically makes sense when he says "enter the file"/"come in to the file"). Which, ironically enough, is not explicitly said in either the wiki or the blog post linked to above (someone needs to fix that. A lot of the documentation here assumes you know the most basic stuff about linux norms and common linux programs. But those of us who need the documentation most usually don't, at least not when we first get here).

So, in terminal (first make sure you have rootsh installed):

1. cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/
2. sudo gainroot
3. vi rx-51

Alternatively you can just type "sudo vi rx-51".

Furthermore, vi is a pain to use until you're used to it, so instead you can download Leafpad or anything that comes up as "text editor" or "source code editor" in the app manager. Then either run that instead of vi (for instance, "leafpad rx-51") after you've used the "cd" command to get to the right directory.

And if you're easily confused you can skip this, but you should be able to skip the cd command step and just do "vi /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/nokia_vndr/xr-51" as root (as in, by typing sudo at the beginning of that command or either sudo gainroot or root, enter, then the command).

- About vi itself -

When you're in vi, at first, you won't be able to edit anything. Don't press too many non-arrow keys or you may order vi to do something you don't want. Use the arrow keys to look around the file until you find what you want to edit. When you've done that, move the cursor to where you want to edit stuff and press "i". Not capital i, it has to be lowercase. You should now be able to type stuff. i will put you in inserting-text mode - you can also over-write individual characters right under your cursor by pressing "r", or enter text over-writing mode (to overwrite more than one character at once) with "R". You should still be able to use the arrow keys in these modes to move around, though I myself can only vouch for i. r and R I've never tried pressing arrow keys in that mode, mainly because I just like working with i.

When you've made the changes you want, Esc (should be on the bar in x-term) will take you out of the editing mode(s) and back into the 'command' mode. From here, if you're satisfied with your changes, you can type ":wq" (if that doesn't work, ":qw", I forget the order sometimes), and that will quit vi while saving what you wrote. (You can remember the command because w stands for 'write', q for 'quit'.) If you are not happy with your changes, either edit again, or, if you want to exit without saving, and cancel everything you changed, type ":q!".

Note to remember - the xr-51 file uses tabs instead of spaces, in between the text that defines the key mappings. Just so you don't accidentally use spaces. Also, make sure to back-up the rx-51 file, ideally somewhere far away from the system folders - I personally back stuff up to a folder on my MicroSD card, but somewhere in your MyDocs directory would do fine.

The copy command in xterm is cp, and you use it by typing in "cp [path and name of file being copied] [path of place it's being copied to]". Make sure to end the path of the place copied-to with a "/", or else you'll end up putting the file one directory above where you were trying to put it, and calling it the name of the folder you meant it to go in.

You are my hero!!

Your brilliant information together with the scandinacian letter names from http://koo.fi/tech/2009/12/20/n900-s...m-us-keyboard/

made me do it!
Thanks so much from both me and my gf!

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.

You can fix wiki by yourself And IMO it´s says it quite obviously in first sentence that you need root access.

Yes it assumes! And IMO It should assume. Why on earth someone would try to do anything in xterm/bash/shell before googling around and learning and reading what has been written many many times? IIRC there was even discussion somewhere here that should x term be even installed by default on N900 and lately I have had second thoughts about it.

But thank you for your guide. All this stuff has been said n+1 times already. If just users gave themselves ~1h of time to read stuff.

I can fix it myself. Unfortunately I have a lot of other things that I'm doing (yes this post is something I think is important enough to say now), which means I have to get around to it first. As I understand it I need to make a seperate account to edit the wiki. If no one who happened to have had more free time did it in a while, I would've done it within a day or two if I remembered.

Anyway, it wasn't about "you need root access" (I think, based on how he asked) the original question. It was about "how do I edit in the first place", namely, what do I type to open the file at all. In this case, vi. The problem with not listing that (and your it's-listed-everywhere statement) is that unless you know what vi is, or have read enough stuff on here, to guess what to look for, you can't look for something like "how to use vi", as you don't even know there is a thing as vi.

Could he have figured out how to use something like vi by typing "how to edit files from terminal" inot Google? Yes. But even using a search engine, especially in a language not native to you, is an art form that some people just don't have the specific cognitive-processes shaping experiences to develop.

That said, I agree with your sentiments over all. There's a bunch of stuff that doesn't need to be covered, and there's plenty of people who don't search enough, for information that's available everywhere. But I just came from the completely Linux newb state a few months ago. And I know that sometimes you really don't just find something. You look for the most basic things and hit a wall because everyone assumes this is common knowledge. I was lucky to find a "Learning the Shell" tutorial online - until that I got like 4 commands simple enough to be memorable from excessive reading of this board. A bunch of the scripts that are documented on here I can look up and use but they make no sense given lack of more basic understanding so they aren't memorable.

Anyway, I like giving people the benefit of the doubt. He presented himself as someone who understood most of what he as asking about, that he did try to look around for an answer, just was missing one piece of information. I did write my usb internet from computer to N900 'guide' to an utterly ignorant thread, because I felt one was lacking, but usually I do not humor people who don't seem like they tried. The op did, hence the reply.

Hey Traceur,

it was indeed the vi part that i didnt understand.
The new files setup line for the added buttons i had already, but i just didnt know how to get into that rx-51 file.
I notice that some people seem pissed because "noobs shouldnt play with stuff they dont understand", but everyone has to learn, and i WANT to learn about this. And your information was a good start for me!

And indeed, maybe "vi" was to basic for most people, that i oversaw that.

anyways, i want to thank you a lot, coz you really made my day with your help! I didnt expect the whole operation to be fixed within a week, and now it was a few hours!

so thanks again.