Marc Aurel <4-tea-2(a)bong.saar.de&gt; writes: You should... Wheee...:-( Martin and I already spent days on this. Everytime we fix it it breaks again. The problem is there are too many different deadkeys setup all to test them all :-( Could you eval the following (x-keysym-on-keyboard-p 'dead-circumflex) and mail me the result. Then apply the following patch, redump XEmacs and see if this works Index: x-init.el =================================================================== RCS file: /usr/CVSroot/XEmacs/xemacs-20/lisp/x-init.el,v retrieving revision 1.8 diff -u -u -r1.8 x-init.el --- x-init.el 1998/05/16 05:06:55 1.8 +++ x-init.el 1998/07/20 17:22:19 ＠＠ -208,6 +208,7 ＠＠ (x-define-dead-key dead-cedilla compose-cedilla-map) (x-define-dead-key dead-diaeresis compose-diaeresis-map) (x-define-dead-key dead-circum compose-circumflex-map) + (x-define-dead-key dead-circumflex compose-circumflex-map) (x-define-dead-key dead-tilde compose-tilde-map) ) b) is what XEmacs is supposed to do already. The trick is to use a string instead of a command M-x global-set-key RET [dead-circumflex] RET "^" RET you will have to paste the string "^" in from an Xterm. Difficult question it is partly an omission in XEmacs, a mess from XFree86 and our friends from the late X consortium and you being you scared to scared to go for MULE :-) (Note the smiley, we are in dire need of poeple with a setup like you (the rest of Germany has long since disabled deadkeys in XFree). If you want to know, MULE enables XIM, which makes the deadkey processing be handled by the X libraries where it shuuld). Keep on testing (I am afraid it so addictive you'll start to learn elisp anyway. Jan