Remap Ctrl, Alt & Super keys in Ubuntu 13.10

Question

I'm trying to remap the last row of my keyboard to mimic the Happy Hacking Keyboard layout. I created a .Xmodmap file with following the keycode changes. The below shows only the lines that have been changed manually in the Xmodmap file generated using xmodmap -pke > ~/.Xmodmap.

keycode 37 = Super_L NoSymbol Super_L
keycode 64 = Control_L NoSymbol Control_L
keycode 105 = Super_R NoSymbol Super_R
keycode 108 = Control_R NoSymbol Control_R
keycode 133 = Alt_L Meta_L Alt_L Meta_L
keycode 134 = Alt_R Meta_R Alt_R Meta_R

The above changes were loaded using

xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap

The changes were verified from running xev i.e. Alt key: Ctrl, Super key: Alt and Ctrl key: Super.

However, when I run emacs, it is still Alt key: Alt, Super key: Super & Ctrl key: Ctrl. And, the terminal can still be launched only by pressing Alt + Ctrl + t instead of Alt + Super + t. These applications still reflect the default keyboard layout, not in accordance to the new configuration in my $HOME/.Xmodmap file.

Added the xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap to the $HOME/.xinitrc file so that the changes are persistant across applications. This did not the work.

Also, added the following code to /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc. But this did not work either.

if [ -f $HOME/.Xmodmap ]; then
    /usr/bin/xmodmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
fi

Kindly provide your suggestions.

Thank you for your time.

-Girish

A little backgroud:

Recently switched to Ubuntu from Windows. I use Emacs for writing code and have found it effective to map the keys as in HHK. It avoids hurting the pinky and RSI of the wrists.

Answer 1

For info, if you don't want to get into the pain of Xmodmap, you can also do a lot via gnome settings.

sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool, open it, go to Typing, and check out the options for Ctrl key position and Alt/Win key behaviour:

You could probably also do this stuff via gsettings, but am not sure of the exact config entry name.