Keyboard layout switching

Keyboard layout maps scancodes from a keyboard into characters sent to application. Keyboard layout can also do more complex transformations via so called dead keys which do not output characters on their own but modify output of subsequent keys. An appropriate keyboard layout is required to support both non-QWERTY keyboards as well as QWERTY keyboards used to enter characters outside of ASCII set.

OpenRC
Edit which is documented but not very understandable. It appears that one should choose appropriate keyboard map likely from as the value for keymap and then optionally also pick files from appropriate include directory such as  other locations might or might not work as values for the extended_keymaps variable.

Lastly add to the boot run level.

Custom keymap
To make a custom keymap look at the provided keymaps in for examples.

Here is an example custom keymap which is the same as the U.S. QWERTY keymap except the forward slash and apostrophe keys are swapped:

To find the keycodes mapped to keys view the output of :

If the key cannot me found using the above command, run:

Just press the key and its keycode will be shown. When finished wait a few seconds and will close.

systemd
systemd uses and includes both tty font and keyboard layout settings but lacks advanced settings found in OpenRC. Valid values should match what OpenRC supports for the corresponding variable.

X11
Modern X11 applications usually use libXklavier (das Klavier being German for keyboard so it has nothing to do with a certain K DE) and can be configured by using. Furthermore X11 supports much broader set of keyboard layouts than virtual terminal. It should be kept in mind that proper desktop environment will do its own keyboard layout management and there's no need to directly use aforementioned application but it can come in handy when dealing with broken or lacking keyboard layout management.

KDE4
Open and navigate to  module.

Generic desktop environment
Edit and call  from there or setup the keyboard in Xorg configuration file (see below for examples).

lxpanel's keyboard layout handler
provides a keyboard layout handler as panel item.



Using setxkbmap
These changes are non-permanent and will persist only as long as user does not restart X11. Naturally the command can be called from a startup script to set the appropriate parameters on every start of the X server.

Querying existing configuration:

Setting a keyboard layout:

Setting a keyboard layout, its variant and model:

Finding the supported layouts and variants or values of other xkb properties does not appear to be possible with this application although most of them is listed in file. To get the most complete list seems to be possible only by examining other files in. For sake of sanity use of a proper desktop environment with its own keyboard layout management is advised.

Using system-wide configured layouts and shortcut
This method is recommended for configuration without desktop environments, in other words just X11 with a window manager. Create the file and configure it with relative keyboard settings.

The example above configures US and brazilian keyboard layouts with + as shortcut to alternate between them. Brazilian layout is signalled by Scroll Lock LED on the keyboard.

Additional configuration possibilities
There are number of variants and options available which can be used when configuring the keyboard. List of those can be found in file.

For example US layout with possibility to write some international characters can be configured by using variant :

is then used as modifier for typing international characters.

Xorg provides option to type international and various symbol characters by composition - which means by pressing compose key followed by sequence of characters. To enable composition add  option:

The  option above configures  as compose key. With this setting:


 * Press then type 'oo' to get degree sign '°'
 * Press then type 'oc' to get copyright sign '©'
 * Press then type ':)' to get smiling face '☺'
 * Press then type '^2' to get superscript 2 '²'
 * Press then type '_2' to get subscript 2 '₂'
 * Press then type 'di' to get diameter sign '⌀'

... and many more. File lists possible compose combinations.

Enhancing an X keyboard layout
This is necessary if you want to make more far-reaching changes to your keyboard layout, such as adding key assignments, or adding actions to function keys. Since such changes are actually enhancements to the source files of a package, you are recommended to use the epatch_user mechanism so that these amendments are preserved when the package is next updated.

The fundamentals
The relevant Gentoo package is. Configuring a keyboard under X is more complicated than the doing the same for a virtual console. The pertinent configuration files can be found in in these subdirectories:


 * keycodes
 * These files associate key codes with symbolic names - you're unlikely to want to change this.


 * geometry
 * This is the physical shape of the keyboard, used by some software for drawing diagrams of it - you'll not want to change this either.


 * types
 * The files here create "types". Used in a key declaration, a type specifies which combinations of shift keys can be used with the key.


 * symbols
 * These files specify the actual key assignments.


 * compat
 * The files here specify "actions" (such as switching to a virtual terminal), giving them names, which can be assigned to keys.


 * rules
 * These files, given parameters such as the keyboard type, and a language, activate the appropriate specifications in the other directories.

A fuller description of the files in these directories can be found at An Unreliable Guide to XKB Configuration by Doug Palmer. It is a lot better than its name suggests. Further documentation can be found at xkeyboard-config's home page at freedesktop.org.

Xkb gives keys names like "" which means "key in the Alphanumeric area, in row C (i.e. third row from the bottom, the row CapsLock is on), and key number 01, the first key at the left of the row". This key is in an English layout. Keys in other areas have other names, such as "" for, or "" for the left control key.

Adding key assignments
As an example, we wish to enhance the British English keyboard layout such that typing, , or with  will generate the German umlaut letters ä, ö, and ü. It should also do the Right Thing for the upper case versions. The keys we want to enhance are (),  () and  (). (The character ß is already assigned to +.)

The names of the umlauted letters in xkb are "adiaeresis" and so on. These names can be found in the file, though you have to remove the leading "XK_"s to get the names.

Identify the pertinent file in the directory. Most of these files are named as two letter country codes, e.g. for Great Britain, so guess the one which matches the keyboard layout you've selected in X. Here, we enhance.

With the information above, we can now create our new entries by copying the existing scheme in. We guess that these entries should be added into the section called "basic". We can also easily guess that the four items in the braces and brackets within the entry for each key:

are for unshifted,, , and + respectively.

After making the additions, the section looks like this:

Having saved this file, restart your X Windows. A typical desktop environment, XFCE, re-reads the above configuration files each time it starts. Should there be errors, error messages will be written to the normal - if you start your X Windows from the command line,  will be the virtual tty you started it from.

Adding actions to function keys
As an example, we wish to add the actions "switch to virtual terminal n" (where n > 12) to the function keys -  when, , and  are all depressed. We also want the same effect when and  are depressed.

First, we find the file in the symbols directory which handles the existing assignments for the Function keys. It is. The entry in this file for, that we intend to modify, is:

There are two things to note with this entry:
 * It is of type "CTRL+ALT"; it thus takes the standard four shift key settings with and, plus a fifth setting of +.  Since we wish to use ++, and there is no suitable existing type, we will need to create a new one.
 * The "action" XF86_Switch_VT_1 is just a defined symbol in the xkb system. It's semantics are given to it by an entry in a file in the compat directory, namely .  There is no symbol XF86_Switch_VT_13 (or higher), so we will purloin the otherwise unused existing symbols F13, F14, ..., F24.

Creating the new type CTRL+ALT+SHIFT
Having located "CTRL+ALT" in, it is easy enough to copy it, rename the copy to "CTRL+ALT+SHIFT" and extend this to allow the modifier key combination ++. The result looks like this:

Activating the symbols F13, ..., F24
The symbol XF86_Switch_VT_1 is swifly located in. It is a simple matter to copy its form, creating assignments for the symbols F13, ..., F24. The definition for the first of these symbols, F13, in then looks like:

Analogous definitions for F14, ..., F24 should also be put into the file.

Amending the entries in symbols for keys, ...,
Now that we have the new type CTRL+ALT+SHIFT and definitions for the symbols F13, ..., F24, we can amend the key definitions for the function keys in. That for is as below, analogous definitions also need to be inserted for the other function keys.

After making these changes to, , and , and restarting your X server, you should be able to switch from X directly to virtual terminals 13 and above - provided that you have configured them in your /etc/inittab (or systemd equivalent), of course. :-)