Where's my pound sign gone?

[Woofage]

It seems that in the last couple of days my keyboard setup has decided to not give me anything but "3" when SHIFT+3 is pressed. Checked the settings and it's still set to a standard UK keyboard (which it is). Any thoughts?

System is Hardy Heron 8.06 on AMD64. Cherry keyboard (not that that should matter).

[Pete]

Can't help you with that, but this stirs up a memory in me - some 20 years ago I was using Wordstar 2000 for all my word processing at work (this was long before the days of Windows).  It used to silently convert every "£" sign into a "#" sign in all the files.  And when I tried to hand-edit the "£" back in using a binary editor, it still changed it back to a "#" when I tried to print the file.  Even on the dot-matrix printer.

In the end I gave up and got into the habit of typing "pounds" or "GBP".

[TimO]

Even though it appears to be configured for the UK keyboard, it's possible that something internally has got confused.  I had a similar issue with my EeePC last week, so I told it to use a US keyboard, which obviously didn't work, and then told it to use a UK keyboard, which in effect forced it to reload the correct bits, and it worked correctly after that.  Depending on the system, you may find a reboot between changes may also be needed to promulgate the changes throughout (although this is more likely to be necessary on Windoze than Linux!)

[rogerzilla]

Can't help you with that, but this stirs up a memory in me - some 20 years ago I was using Wordstar 2000 for all my word processing at work (this was long before the days of Windows).  It used to silently convert every "£" sign into a "#" sign in all the files.  And when I tried to hand-edit the "£" back in using a binary editor, it still changed it back to a "#" when I tried to print the file.  Even on the dot-matrix printer.

In the end I gave up and got into the habit of typing "pounds" or "GBP".

Ironically, "#" is called a "pound sign" by Americans.

[drossall]

Hold down the Alt key. On the numeric keypad, type 0163. Release the Alt key.

Could be a broken Shift key. Beg, steal or borrow another keyboard and try that. If it works, buy a new keyboard. They are pretty-much interchangeable.

[Woofage]

Hold down the Alt key. On the numeric keypad, type 0163. Release the Alt key.

No worky on Linux

Could be a broken Shift key. Beg, steal or borrow another keyboard and try that. If it works, buy a new keyboard. They are pretty-much interchangeable.

Shift key is fine. I did check that first

[Woofage]

Even though it appears to be configured for the UK keyboard, it's possible that something internally has got confused.  I had a similar issue with my EeePC last week, so I told it to use a US keyboard, which obviously didn't work, and then told it to use a UK keyboard, which in effect forced it to reload the correct bits, and it worked correctly after that.  Depending on the system, you may find a reboot between changes may also be needed to promulgate the changes throughout (although this is more likely to be necessary on Windoze than Linux!)

Tried switching to a different layout and then back again. It didn't fix the problem.

I now get an error on login which may contain some clues. I'll investigate later.

Code: [Select]

Error activating XKB configuration.
It can happen under various circumstances:
- a bug in libxklavier library
- a bug in X server (xkbcomp, xmodmap utilities)
- X server with incompatible libxkbfile implementation

X server version data:
The X.Org Foundation
10400090

If you report this situation as a bug, please include:
- The result of xprop -root | grep XKB
- The result of gconftool-2 -R /desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd

[Woofage]

Apparently it's an old issue and can be cured by:

Code: [Select]

sudo xmodmap -e 'keycode 12 = 3 sterling'
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