this small shell script (accompanied by an emacs org-mode file, which sort of documents the process of arriving at the shell script) re-configures the keyboard, and other low-level bits, of a Linux system (Kubuntu is what i am using) to make it more pallatable to me, a non-Japanese speaker. the main thing is making use of the specific Japanese-language keys (Zenkaku Hankaku, Muhenkan, Henkan, Hiragana-Katakana) as additional escape, meta, and alt keys.
the script also redefines the CAPS LOCK key as an additional Ctrl (control key); makes the Windows key an additional Alt key; and redefines the Del key to be an additional BackSpace key.
in addition, this adds copy and paste to xterm(1) (via C-S-c and C-S-v) as well as making meta (and alt) send an Escape to xterm (so that, e.g., M-b goes back one word in bash(1)).
this script turns off the click feature of the trackpad. also, unless the –notmaclike option is given, the script configures the trackpad to do vertical scrolling like [more modern] Macintoshes.
among other things, the script invokes xkbcomp(1), which will likely generate a number of warnings, such as:
Warning: Key <I195> not found in evdev+aliases(qwerty) keycodes
Symbols ignored
Warning: Key <I196> not found in evdev+aliases(qwerty) keycodes
Symbols ignored
Warning: Key <I255> not found in evdev+aliases(qwerty) keycodes
Symbols ignored
Warning: No symbols defined for <JPCM> (keycode 103)
Warning: No symbols defined for <I120> (keycode 120)
these can be safely ignored.