[Techtalk] Getting Shift-Backspace to emulate the Delete key

[David Sumbler]

I recently acquired an Asus Eee netbook.  I run Ubuntu 12.04LTS on it.

It has a German keyboard.  I ususally use a UK keyboard, but I did not
think that the German layout would be a problem: I use various
smartphones, tablets and also a computer with a US keyboard, so I am
quite used to symbols and punctuation appearing in different places.
The only alphabetic difference between a German and and English-language
keyboard (apart from keys for ä,ö,ü and ß) is that the Y and the Z are
swapped over.

But I soon found that when typing quickly I was continually putting Z
for Y, so decided that I should swap these over.  This proved to be
quite easy: following advice that I found on
http://askubuntu.com/questions/24916/how-do-i-remap-certain-keys
I used the two different methods shown there, one to change the console
keyboard, and the other to change the X11 behaviour.  (I also found it
very easy to swap the two plastic keytops over.  Job done!)

There is another problem with this keyboard, though, and that is that
there is no Delete key.  So I thought that perhaps I could assign the
forward-delete function to Shift-BackSpace (and/or Ctrl-BackSpace).

But I can't get this to work either in X or in a console.  When I make
the apparently appropriate changes in ~/.Xmodmap
or /etc/console-setup/remap.inc and reboot, I find that Shift-BackSpace
either does a normal BackSpace or nothing at all.  In the case of the
console, sometimes Shift-BackSpace produces "~2" on the command line!

How can I assign a forward-delete function to Shift-BackSpace?

David