My default keyboard layout looks like this
$ xmodkeymap -pke
...
keycode 38 = a A a A ae AE ae AE a A ae AE
...
I want to modify the part of the layout where mode_switch is pressed, that is, columns 3 and 4 should be changed, but all the other columns should stay the same.
Currently, I copied the old layout and replaced columns 3 and 4:
...
keycode 38 = a A Greek_alpha Greek_ALPHA ae AE ae AE a A ae AE
...
However, it would be nicer if there was a way to write an .xmodmap file by only specifying the differences to the default keyboard layout.
Ideally, there would be some placeholder – let's call it * – that stands for the symbol used in the default layout. The same file could then be written as:
...
keycode 38 = * * Greek_alpha Greek_ALPHA * * * * * * * *
...
I could write a script that generates an .xmodmap from a file like above, but I would prefer a built-in solution for xmodmap.
