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    HOW2: xorg.conf for Colemak and other xkb-layouts

    • Started by littlecoder
    • 1 Replies:
    • Reputation: 0
    • Registered: 17-Jan-2008
    • Posts: 1

    The Problem
    I found the question very often but no answer in public forums: How can I use colemak as additional keyboard-layout and switch between us/colemak-kayout? Using the try-and-error-method I found out the following solution:

    First Problem: editing the xorg.conf
    /etc/X11/xorg.conf looks like that and it works:

    Section "InputDevice"
            Identifier  "Keyboard0"
            Driver      "kbd"
            Option      "XkbLayout" "us,de,colemak"
            Option      "XkbModel" "logicdpa"
            Option      "XkbVariant" "nodeadkeys" 
    EndSection

    As you might have noticed I do not use the Option "XkbSymbols" "pc(105)+colemak" as it is explained in the tutorial on this page, because I could not get it working for different keyboard-languages. I tried things like Option "XkbSymbols" "pc(105),pc(105),pc(105)+colemak", but nothing did the trick for me.

    Next Problem: Capslock does both: delete chars as backspace AND locks capitals...
    I decided to deactivate the caps-lock-key (which I guess noone really needs) on any keyboard-layout. I found no solution to do this using xorg.conf (see above) or in the colemak-xkb-def-file (see below), so I wrote a shellscript looking like that:

    #!/bin/bash
    xmodmap -e "remove Lock = Caps_Lock"

    and saved it as ~/.kde/Autostart/deactivatecaps.bsh (to make it executable execute a chmod 755 ~/.kde/Autostart/deactivatecaps.bsh).  This should work with KDE, but not using xfce. So I also added it to the xfce4-autostart using xfce4-autostart-editor. Reactivating caps lock inside a running X11-Session can be done with

    xmodmap -e "add Lock = Caps_Lock"

    as I expected.

    Nice Icons and quick changing the keyboard-layout
    I use XFCE4, where you have the so called xfce4-xkb-plugin. With it you have symbols for any language/keyboardlayout in your panel and you can switch the layout with a single click on it. Copying any png-file called colemak.png (where I used a typewriter as picture *lol*) to /usr/share/xfce4/xkb/flags/ will display it when you choose colemak as your keyboard-layout. The png-picture should have a size of 60x40 pixels.

    ...maybe anybody can be so kind to explain how this works using KDE/GNOME.


    the file called "colemak" - just a hint...
    colemak (definition-file for the colemak-layout) is located in /usr/share/X11/xkb/ on my system after having installed the Fedora's RPM-package, while the configure-script (which you get here) installs it in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/. You might find it in /usr/local/share/X11/xkb using ubuntu/debian. You can search for it with find / -name colemak if you do not find the file.

    Last edited by littlecoder (17-Jan-2008 05:36:17)
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    • Registered: 09-Jun-2008
    • Posts: 3

    Thanks for your post,
    The 3rd level doesn't work though.
    (i.e. RAlt )
    Any idea how to fix that?

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