Ahh.. SWMBO had some such similar complaint -- it's the new X.org keyboard stuff that's different. She wanted to switch between standard and international ("accent keys") layouts on the fly, so we figured out a way to do it. Here's her cookie crumb trail:

Quote:

- system settings -> accessibility -> KHotKeys
- New Group, set the name to something like "accent keys". Then move the group
to the top (or into some appropriate folder, whatever you like)
- New Action,
- set the name to something appropriate, like F11-US-kbd
- set the Action type to "Keyboard Shortcut -> Command/URL (simple)
- make sure Disable is *not* checked
- under Keyboard Shortcut, click on the "none" button & then you can type the
key you want to use as the hotkey (e.g. F11)
- under Command/URL Settings, type in the name of the command to run. YOU
CAN'T provide options to the command so if your command needs options,
you'll have to put them in a script. So, for accents, my command is
/usr/local/bin/KB-INTL where KB-INTL is just this simple script file:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant alt-intl &>/dev/null

and to get the normal keyboard again, the command script is KB_US:

#!/bin/sh
exec /usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant basic &>/dev/null

- OK, apply all that and then check that the sw that runs hotkeys is running
- personal -> kde components -> service manager
make sure KMilo is checked under Startup Services

with kde 3.4.2 kubuntu systemsettings
- us_intl has been incorporated inside the us file as an "alt-intl" variant AND
in the system settings (the old control center) -> accessibility -> keyboard
layout, you only get to choose one variant. So you can't switch between
them. BLAH. NFG.
- SO.... the easiest thing to do is to map the change-keyboard commands onto
function keys (or any keyboard shortcut you like). The command to set the
accent keyboard is:
/usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant alt-intl
and the one for the regular keyboard is:
/usr/bin/setxkbmap -model pc104 -layout us -variant basic
(There's another variant, "intl" which does some (all?) of the accents &
maybe it'll work better than alt-intl, but I haven't tried it yet.)