On Thu, May 18, 2023 at 10:27:54AM -0400, Haines Brown wrote:

> Bill, my fault, I had forgotten the xev command. Using it I find that
> the right Alt keysymb for the right Alt key on the Dell keyboard is
> Multi_key. Setting that as the compose key solved my problem.

To me that sounds like some other configuration already associates the
Compose functionality with the key. I would not expect this out of the
box. Maybe you tried to configure composing from the GUI before?

> Questions remain. I have Multi_key set as my comppose key for
> XKBOPTIONS in /etc/default/keyboard and I also copied this keyboard
> file to ~/.Xmodmap.

I don't think you're supposed to mix xmodmap (which is considered a
"legacy" thing) and xkb. I'd try to set everything with setxkbmap.

--
Ian