First of all, thank you very much for sharing this project DreymaR.
Tough I'm not using the Colemak Layout, I am really curious about your extended navigation layout.

I am using the German layout on Ubuntu 14.04 and here I don't have the possibility to add options via GUI. So I added the extend layout with the following command:

setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout de -variant nodeadkeys -option lv5:caps_switch_lock,misc:extend

I was really impressed, that everything seemed to work fine, since I was fiddeling around with xmodmap to make something similar for some time lately.

Your work is really nice, but there are still a few issures for me:

• How can I reenable the Caps_Lock key, or customize it? I would like to map it to sth like extend+control_r

• When the extend key and ctrl (the iso5 one) is pressed together and hold for a second (without any other key), there is also send the letter on which is the ctrl key on, when releasing the key again. This doesn't happen with the other iso5 modifier keys like alt and shift.

• Setting this keyboard layout disables my virtual consoles (tty's) on Ubuntu, did you also notice this behaviour? I'm sure they're running in the background but I cannot access them. Neither with your extended mods, nor with the 'normal' shortcuts ctrl+alt+f1-6. Can this be solved?

Thanks for your work again!

Thank you for your quick response!

I managed to get the ttys working again by disabling your media key mappings on the function row, as you supposed.

Still, I don't recognize how to enable Caps_Lock with leaving the key as extend.
I found this snippet here in the extend file, but nothing of it works for me. How is this supposed to act?

    key <SCLK> { symbols[Group1]=[ NoSymbol , NoSymbol , NoSymbol , NoSymbol ,
                   Caps_Lock            , Caps_Lock             , // CapsLock
                   Caps_Lock            , Caps_Lock            ], // CapsLock
                 actions[Group1]=[NoAction(),NoAction(),NoAction(),NoAction(),
                   SetMods(mods=Lock)   , SetMods(mods=Lock)    , // Lock mod for <CAPS>
                   NoAction()           , NoAction()           ]
               };  // ScrollLock

If I test this with xev, my keysym output is as follows:

• When I press <SCLK>, I get Scroll_Lock

• When I press <Shift>+<SCLK>, I get NoSymbol

• When I press <Extend>+<SCLK>, I get Caps_Lock

Though this sounds as it should work, it doesn't :((

my xmodmap output is this here:

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Scroll_Lock (0x4e)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x69)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Meta_L (0xcd)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d),  BadKey (0xcf)
mod3        ISO_Level5_Shift (0xcb)
mod4        Super_L (0x85),  Super_R (0x86),  Super_L (0xce)
mod5        ISO_Level3_Shift (0x5c)

Hope you have some suggestions, xkb conig files really confuse me... :P

I finally managed to solve my problems with caps lock with sort of a workaround.

I simply disabled your capslock solution completely and remapped it with dconf-editors option 'shift:both_capslock'
There was also a problem with your caps lock solution, that the number row wouldn't behave like before.
Usually caps lock does only trigger on the alpha keys in Ubuntu, not on the numbers and signs (at least for the german language).

Here is the guide for everyone who has similar problems, I'm on Ubuntu 14.04:

• First, I completely commented out the code section I mentioned above with scroll lock in the extend file.

  // key <SCLK> { symbols[Group1]=[ NoSymbol , NoSymbol , NoSymbol , NoSymbol ,
  //                Caps_Lock            , Caps_Lock             , // CapsLock
  //                Caps_Lock            , Caps_Lock            ], // CapsLock
  //              actions[Group1]=[NoAction(),NoAction(),NoAction(),NoAction(),
  //                SetMods(mods=Lock)   , SetMods(mods=Lock)    , // Lock mod for <CAPS>
  //                NoAction()           , NoAction()           ]
  //            };  // ScrollLock

• A few lines above, I commented out the line with EIGHT_LEVEL_SEMIALPHABETIC and uncommented your line above this one witch says 'EIGHT_LEVEL'

  key.type[group1]="EIGHT_LEVEL"; // Lock not used
  // key.type[group1]="EIGHT_LEVEL_SEMIALPHABETIC"; // Lock affects lv1/5 but not lv3/7 - a bit inflexible but OK I guess

• And finally I changed my configuration in dconf-editor to reenable caps lock with pressing Shift_L and Shift_R simultanously.
  For this, you have to navigate to the path 'org > gnome > desktop > input-sources' and insert the following line in xkb-options

  ['lv5:caps_switch_lock', 'misc:extend', 'shift:both_capslock']

After going through this steps, everything works like before again + the extended functionality.

Furthermore, I recognized the problems with control and the f key only happen when I'm working in a virtual machine. Must be something with that, though it is really weird...

I already fell in love with this extended functionality. Thanks again for making this possible. I'll spread the word ;)

Saw some github discussion on the main page, but never a link.

Is this the main repo? Is it being updated?
https://github.com/DreymaR/xkb-mod_2-5-1-3

Is there any possibility to use the extend layer inside the TTY virtual console, too??

Ah, ok. I really recommend github and their "releases" feature, which allows you to easily tag and release an easily downloadable .zip of the project. Would also let others follow along and/or contribute to development.

If the script is as good as I think it is, in this case experimenting should actually be quite safe. :-)

But yes, at this point your experience is very valuable as it may help us improve on the clarity of the product. Thanks for chiming in!

You're right, some examples are needed. I'm just reworking parts of the Big Bag text (locales, Curl mods!) so here's one more TODO for me then. I think the examples need to be in the actual file documentation because not everyone will be reading the BBoT while trying this.

The '-d' and '-t' options are only used if your mod dir has an odd path/name. If you're using my files as they came, you won't need to set those.

Install script usage example: Local install
    • Install in the default location (safe, under your home directory, but inaccessible to the GUI)
    • Run setxkbmap automatically, activating the French "Universal Symbols" Colemak[eD] layout
    • Furthermore, activate the WideAngle ISO board model ('pc105awide-sl')
    • For activating a single layout and model, we use a 'model locale eD-variant' shortstring with '-s <str>'
    • Since no system files are affected, force no backup with '-n'

$> ./install-dreymar-xmod.sh -s '5w fr us' -n
...or for instance...
$> bash install-dreymar-xmod.sh -ns '5w fr us'

Install script usage example: System install
    • Install to the system X11/xkb directory with '-o' (changes will show up in the system settings GUI)
    • (You may need to know your sudo password, but don't have to run the script as sudo)
    • Just activate the default layout ('5w us us') with '-x'; necessary to get AngleWide as models aren't GUI selectable
    • (A backup of the xkb dir will automatically be made if none is found in the system X11 dir; to force a fresh one use '-b')

$> ./install-dreymar-xmod.sh -ox

Install script usage example: Restore
    • Restore the oldest backup with '-r 1'
    • (To get a newer one, use a higher number; may well be too high if you wish to ensure the latest backup)

$> ./install-dreymar-xmod.sh -r 1

Is that good?

Update:

New Generic pc104/ANSI keyboard models available for the ergo modder!
• pc104angle-z: As before, the Angle(Z) mod moves the Z into the old B position to fix XCVB
• pc104wide-qu: The Wide(Quote) mod is as before
• pc104awide-zqu: The combination of the two mods above to the Angle(Z)Wide(Quote) mod
• pc104aframe: Instead of going Wide, this achieves the Angle mod without sacrificing the Z

   
    The AngleFrame ergo mod

(The pc105/ISO models are as before)

I wonder if there is a case for putting apostrophe to the left of the A. It's a reasonably nice location by non-alphabetic key standards, so perhaps a more common punctuation should be there? That does split up the two square brackets though, unless you have the both directly above the return key and then have ' and \ on the left. I guess anyone adopting that layout may well customize it to their taste anyway.

I'm guessing not !

install bit script examples are a big improvement

on the curl section i would be equally explicit in your instructions

maybe highlight the symbols filename in bold or make it courier or something to show that its a file name that you have to modify

make the point that if its in the /usr/share type location you'll need root access to modify it

actually explicitly show the 'from' -> 'to' for the text changes you have to make to that file using that nice black box format

as with all documentation, the golden rule is that explanations are generally not that useful, examples and snippets are generally massively useful

Main topic update: I added my MessagEase mappings! They're neither XKB(Linux) nor PKL(Windows) but they're a useful and important part of my Big Bag Of Keyboard Tricks nevertheless! And these days I type quite a lot on the phone so I want the public to know how it's done. ;-)

Thanks for the feedback!

1) The GUI is supposed to be working, and did so last time I tested it in Ubuntu. Depends on your install options though – did you install with the -o switch?

2) Yes, as you noticed the Mouse Keys can be turned on and off in Linux so I added the switch for that.

3) The Extend mappings are by position more than by key name. I realize that this seems odd using your Curl(Dvbg) variant, so feel free to do a little Extend remappery yourself.

4) No, the 'N' key mapping isn't unnecessary in my opinion! I added the reason for it in the comments: A Vim-like line of Arrow symbols (instead of the default cross). Pretty, n'est-ce-pas?!?

5) Adding new entries takes a bit of practice. You'd have to alter evdev, the xml and list files in the rules component (and the base ones for other distros). You found the easy solution though.
    I chose to split between 6 and 7 as that's most often the case with split ergonomic keyboards. The right hand has the plus/minus keys too which are quite common, so it's more fair too.

6) Your keycodes/evdev solution is the most robust way of remapping the "hardware" key. To go with that, you could also just remap the RWin code.

Glad the hackery is useful! :-)