Escape characters in config file?

[jpretori]

I've been using i3wm on Mint 20.1 for a few months now, and have been generally very happy. Recently I tried to configure a compose key so that I can make characters like é without much trouble.

So I did some searching and found that this is the command I need: xmodmap -e "keycode 105 = Multi_key" and that it needs to be run every time my session starts.

This works in my terminal, whether I use single or double quotes.

So I went into ~/.config/i3/config and added this line:

exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'xmodmap -e \\"keycode 105 = Multi_key\\"'

Which doesn't work. I tried using single \ as the escape character, that doesn't work either. The i3 manual doesn't seem to offer any hints on how to make this work.

What should I do in the i3 config file to execute a command on startup, if that command requires the use of single or double quotes?

[Airblader]

In general I'd recommend putting the command in a script instead and execute that instead of dealing with escaping it.

[dojero]

The xmodmap -e command does't last. But you can make the change permanent by creating an ~/.Xmodmap file (with the command xmodmap > ~/.Xmodmap). Then you can modify you .Xmodmap file with your keycode 105 change. Once you do, X will check the .Xmodmap file and do what it says. There's no need for i3 to be involved.

[jpretori]

Thanks! For the sake of future people doing web searches and finding this thread, I discovered that running sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration leads one through a set of what looks like ncurses-based dialogs that asks for some keyboard setup preferences.

This process appears to update the file /etc/default/keyboard. In my particular case, it seems to have added a line XKBOPTIONS="compose:ralt" to that file. It works now, even across reboots.