rupee currency symbol (₹)

vrgovinda · 2026-08-17 11:13:34

Hi all/

I got into a problem here.

I have a 104 key keyboard with a L-shaped Enter key US layout.
Off late, the rupee currency symbol (on 4) hasn't been working. It used to work in the past.

OS: Excalibur
DE: Xfce
Input source: English (India, with rupee)

I will be grateful if the rupee currency symbol (₹) can be made to work again using Alt + 4

regards,
vrgovinda

Last edited by vrgovinda (2026-08-17 11:24:11)

RedGreen925 · 2026-08-17 16:09:01

The Compose key held down then the = key hit letting the Compose go then a shift key held for a capital R give me the ₹ character. I use this script to enable the Compose key as the useless to me Caps lock key in LXQT in its autostart option in the settings, KDE when I used to use it had the option to enable directly in its settings. Perhaps you may want to check in your settings on xfce to see if an option exists for it or run the command in the script as normal user in a Terminal then try the combination for its display.

zeus@9600k:~$ cat bin/compose_key.sh 
#!/bin/bash
# enable compose key on login when using LXQT

setxkbmap -option "compose:caps"

fsmithred · 2026-08-17 19:15:48

I think only Gnome, KDE and Mate include a keyboard layout setting for English(India) with rupee. I couldn't find it in xfce or lxqt. Other option is to customize as described above or similar.

ralph.ronnquist · 2026-08-18 00:13:52

Afaict, the Indian keyboard layout (setxkbmap in) seems to have a generic Rupee key code ( U2089 = ₹ ) bound to Right-Alt + Shift + 4.

tux_99 · 2026-08-18 00:25:15

You can create an /etc/X11/Xmodmap (if you want it for all users) or ~/.Xmodmap (just for your own user) file with the keymappings you need.

To check which keymap corresponds to a key on your keyboard run xev in a terminal.

A mapping looks like this (this adds the '©' symbol on the 'c' key on my keyboard using the right Windows key as modifier):

keysym Super_R = Mode_switch
keysym    c = c C copyright

See also the Xmodmap man-page.

Last edited by tux_99 (2026-08-18 00:29:04)

vrgovinda · 2026-08-19 10:09:33

Thanks to one and all for your thoughts.

I forgot to mention that I am using ibus input framework.

With the English (India, with rupee) as the input method, I was actually able to get it with Alt_Right + 4.

Now I discovered that Alt_right + Shift + 4 outputs £ even with Tamil, Sanskrit and Hindi as the input methods.

So I think it should be possible to tinker with some existing config file which might have got corrupted or changed.

I don't wish to create a new file just to get this right.

Thanks again.
Grateful for giving your time.

Mercury · 2026-09-11 07:42:19

Xmodmap is a very commonly suggested quick-and-dirty solution and it does work, but it's a patch over a missing or incorrect xkb layout, which is what should really be fixed.

What is the output of setxkbmap -verbose 10? That will show what layout and additional options are being used.

If the command is not found, you need to install the x11-xkb-utils package first.

vrgovinda · Yesterday 10:03:41

ralph.ronnquist

When I type setxkbmap in, I can't type in English anymore. I wish to use the regular keyboard layout with Right_Alt + 4 for the rupee symbol.

Mercury

sorry for the late reply.

setxkbmap -verbose 10

Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/evdev...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev...
Success.
Applied rules from evdev:
rules:      evdev
model:      pc104
layout:     us
options:    ctrl:swapcaps
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes:   evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types:      complete
compat:     complete
symbols:    pc+us+inet(evdev)+ctrl(swapcaps)
geometry:   pc(pc104)

vrgovinda · Yesterday 10:19:45

Some insight

`/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us` has line 96 as:

key <AE04> {[4, dollar, currency, sterling]};

whereas `/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/in` has line 47 as:

key <AE04> {[U096a, dollar, 4, U20b9]}; // Rupee

So I am quite sure that this is a fixable issue. But I don't know how to fix it.

Last edited by vrgovinda (Yesterday 10:20:49)

kapqa · Yesterday 14:43:58

maybe you need to set

[del]setxkbmap en variant in[/del]

or something similar;

think it was correctly reported in a previous post that was deleted; unfortunaetely seem to no longer find the info easily;
maybe the @administrator can rehash the signifcant portion deleted and append it here?

i do apologise for the inconvience;

Last edited by kapqa (Yesterday 14:50:18)

Mercury · Yesterday 16:10:23

setxkbmap -layout in -variant eng -verbose 10

I expect this is the layout you had previously. It's called "English (India, with rupee)".

If that command gives you what you expect, then you should make it permanent. The correct way to do this, (assuming you have no keyboard management software that would override it) is this:

/etc/default/keyboard

XKBMODEL="pc104"
XKBLAYOUT="in"
XKBVARIANT="eng"

If there's also an XKBOPTIONS line in there, it's probably best to leave it as-is until you need additional tweaks.

FYI, you were on the right track looking the the xkb/symbols files as they indeed contain keyboard layouts your system has access to. However, each file contains many layouts as "variants", sometimes very different ones even within the same file. The main layout is identified with the name of the file and the variants are named within it.

Last edited by Mercury (Yesterday 16:28:56)

vrgovinda · Today 10:26:56

setxkbmap -layout in -variant eng -verbose 10

Thanks Mercury. This works!! What a relief.

/etc/default/keyboard has the following.

# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

XKBMODEL="pc104alt"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT="altgr-intl"
XKBOPTIONS="ctrl:swapcaps"

BACKSPACE="guess"

I have ibus running. It helps me switch between different languages with ease (I work with multi linguial documents quite often). Will that matter?

Last edited by vrgovinda (Today 10:27:26)

vrgovinda · Today 10:36:49

a doubt.

Where can I find the keyboard layout for India with variant English?

/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/in doesn't seem to include English.

// Keyboard layouts for India.

// This file includes layouts for:
//     - Hindi
//     - Marathi
//     - Sanskrit
//     - Bangla
//     - Assamese
//     - Gujarati
//     - Kannada
//     - Malayalam
//     - Oriya
//     - Santali
//     - Tamil
//     - Telugu
//     - Urdu

ralph.ronnquist · Today 11:03:35

Search for xkb_symbols "eng" ... a small stanza between "hin-wx" and "mal_enhanced". It obviously was left out from the documentation.

rolfie · Today 11:11:09

On the GUI gucharmap might be helpful for adding special characters to documents.

Mercury · Today 17:19:06

I have never used ibus but from a brief glance it seems to qualify as "software that would override" default xkb settings as I mentioned previously. This is corroborated by the fact that setxkbmap -verbose 10 outputs different settings than what is in /etc/default/keyboard.

This is a bit of a guess, but I think you need to change something in ibus to make it use in(eng) as its default/English/Latin layout instead of whatever it is using currently. It seems to be using a plain unadorned us layout instead.

From Ubuntu's man page:

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/noble/man1/ibus-setup.1.html wrote:

Use system keyboard layout
If this option is enabled, use your system keymap instead and IBus does not change it with any input method engines. The system keymap is decided by your desktop session.
IBus calls setxkbmap (1) command internally to set the selected keymap and override the system keymap if this options is disabled. You can check the current keymap with setxkbmap -query command.

(Minor: setxkbmap -verbose 10 provides more diagnostic info than setxkbmap -query but both will show the layout in use.)

Last edited by Mercury (Today 17:29:47)

Calamity · Today 21:28:07

I use fcitx5 with mozc for Japanese input. It also overrides XKB/DE keyboard settings by default. To disable this behavior, I used the fcitx5-configtool. Perhaps something similar exists for ibus as well - a config file or a command.

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#1 2026-08-17 11:13:34

rupee currency symbol (₹)

#2 2026-08-17 16:09:01

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#3 2026-08-17 19:15:48

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#4 2026-08-18 00:13:52

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#5 2026-08-18 00:25:15

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#6 2026-08-19 10:09:33

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#7 2026-09-11 07:42:19

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#8 Yesterday 10:03:41

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#9 Yesterday 10:19:45

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#10 Yesterday 14:43:58

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#11 Yesterday 16:10:23

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#12 Today 10:26:56

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#13 Today 10:36:49

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#14 Today 11:03:35

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#15 Today 11:11:09

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#16 Today 17:19:06

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

#17 Today 21:28:07

Re: rupee currency symbol (₹)

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