Would Like to Change NumLock Behavior to Match MS Windows Behavior

[Gilbert Sullivan]

On 09/16/2011 11:46 AM, Mișu Moldovan wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 16, 2011 at 17:32, Gilbert Sullivan<whirly.gig at hotmail.com>  wrote:
> [snip]
>> You are most helpful. I really appreciate your time, effort, and knowledge.
>> I'll be looking into that as well as xmodmap. Strangely, I can't find
>> xmodmap in the main Debian repository, and of course the
>> xfce4-kbdleds-plugin isn't there. I'll have to do a little spelunking in the
>> Debian package lists and check out the xfce4-goodies site, too.
>
> The xmodmap command should be a part of the x11-xserver-utils package,
> at least that's what a see on a Debian stable box.
> xfce4-kbdleds-plugin probably needs to be compiled from sources.
>

I thought I should report success on this issue in the hope that it 
might be useful to someone else.

As I mentioned earlier, in Gnome there is a keyboard-settings-properties 
dialog that allows setting the NumLock behavior to match MS Windows 
behavior. I discussed this on the debian-users list with a terrifically 
helpful person. She found that the Windows compatibility setting I 
mentioned created the following line in /etc/X11/xkb/base.xml

XKBOPTIONS="numpad:microsoft"

That file doesn't exist in my non-gnome system. So I put the line in 
/etc/default/keyboard, rebooted, and "Bob's your uncle!"

I had been planning to use xev and an ~/.Xmodmap file to remap the 
keycodes for all shift key combinations with the numeric keypad keys so 
that they would only produce the results I desired, but this is a lot 
easier and cleaner. The remapping method probably would have had some 
undesirable results, too -- especially with a lummox like me trying to 
make it work.

Many thanks again for your help, Mișu Moldovan! I'm very certain that 
what I've started learning about remapping is going to come in handy in 
the future.

Regards,
Gilbert