Umlaut and Sterling signs on US Keyboards

I write email and reports in English, German and Indonesian. And it annoys me that there are no German umlauts, EURO and Sterling signs on the US keyboard of my laptop (Asus UL20A). I'd been looking for ways how to map those characters on the keyboard, but no simple solution was around.

Until I stumbled upon this solution from Lars Michelsen. And it's so simple! Thank to Lars! Here how I did it following the instruction from Lars:


1. Create a file .Xmodmap in home directory (for example touch .Xmodmap)
2. Copy and paste following lines in the file

! Map umlauts to RIGHT ALT +
keycode 108 = Mode_switch
keysym e = e E EuroSign
keysym c = c C cent
keysym a = a A adiaeresis Adiaeresis
keysym o = o O odiaeresis Odiaeresis
keysym u = u U udiaeresis Udiaeresis
keysym s = s S ssharp
keysym l = l L sterling

Note: the last line is added by me, because I need also the Sterling sign (by pressing Right-Alt+l)

3. If you are in Ubuntu, just log out and log in again and you can use the key combination to produce the characters. Right-Alt+o for example produces ö and so on.

4. Alternatively type following command in terminal: xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

Again a big thank you to Lars. Please visit his website. It's worth it!

Final words:

Do you fancy buying a keyboard? Amazon UK offers the best deals of Logitech K300 Compact Keyboard and Logitech K200 Media Keyboard.


Reference:
Lars Michelsen, German Umlauts on US Keyboard in X (Ubuntu 10.04)