I give here some information on XKB (X keyboard extension), in particular to modify the configuration as a simple user (without root access). Thus my XKB configuration completely replaced my old .xmodmaprc file (which didn't work correctly with the new kbd driver).
Two useful commands:
To output the current settings: setxkbmap -print
To dump the current XKB keyboard description to a file xkb.dump: xkbcomp $DISPLAY xkb.dump
In one's $HOME, create a directory .xkb and 2 or 3 subdirectories:
keymap: this directory will contain a file with the keyboard settings. It may be based on the output of setxkbmap -print.
symbols: this directory will contain a file with the remapped keys. Examples can be found thanks to xkbcomp $DISPLAY xkb.dump (see the xkb_symbols section) or files from the /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols directory (for instance, see files latin and pc).
types (optional): this directory can contain a file with new key types, if need be.
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