Judging from my findings on the interwebs it is possible to pass options for the X11 keyboard via hal's policies. This seems very useful for system-wide keyboards settings. However, I'm having problems making them stick.
I can do the setup via xkbcomp, and the relevant line is
xkb_symbols { include "pc+gb+inet(evdev)+level3(ralt_alt)+level3(enter_switch)+compose(menu)" };
This is what I have in /etc/hal/fdi/policy/mouse-wheel.fdi : <match key="info.product" string="TPPS/2 IBM TrackPoint"> <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheel" type="string">true</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.EmulateWheelButton" type="string">2</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.XAxisMapping" type="string">6 7</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.YAxisMapping" type="string">4 5</merge> </match> so extrapolated from that, it should be something like <merge key="input.x11_options.XkbLayout" type="string">gb</merge> <merge key="input.x11_options.XkbOptions" type="string">compose(menu)</merge> for ex. Afaik you don't need pc and inet(evdev), since those are defaults. -- damjan