Disabling and Enabling the Compose Key

The Compose key is defined to be Ctrl-Shift-F1 on IA-based systems.

If you do not use the Compose key, you can disable it so that you do not press it inadvertently. First, find out the keycode for Multi_key:

$ xmodmap -pk | grep Multi_key

Your system displays a line similar to:

nn 0xff20 (Multi_key)

Use the two-digit keycode number at the beginning of the line, represented by nn, to construct the following line in your .xinitrc file.

xmodmap -e 'keycode nn = NoSymbol'

To re-enable the Compose key, comment out the previous line in your .xinitrc file and restart the OpenWindows software.