Dear ALUG,
I decided to give up on X display managers some time ago and I now just log in to the console and start X with the startx wrapper.
However, I've never been able to get xmodmap to load my ~/.xmodmap file properly in this set up. The file itself is fine; I always execute xmodmap manually after starting my window manager and my key modifications are correctly applied.
Just now I've been experimenting with switching from Fluxbox (which I've been using for years) to XMonad. And doing so has brought this xmodmap problem back to my attention because it's the same with XMonad as it's always been with Fluxbox.
I've tried putting
xmodmap ~/.xmodmap
both in ~/.xinitrc and in Fluxbox's start up file. And now in XMonad's start up file too. I've tried adding a sleep:
sleep 0.5 && xmodmap ~/.xmodmap
after reading a few suggestions that there might be some sort of default that may be getting applied after mine.
Any ideas what's going on here?
Richard