Unicode Easy Keyboard Layout for XKB

This is a keyboard layout for XKB, the keyboard subsystem used by the X.org X11 server, a popular X server for Linux and *BSD systems. While it is intended as a port of the Unicode Easy Keyboard Layout for Windows XP, there are some differences. Please refer to the table below.

The XKB version also includes the following additional characters that are not included in the WinXP version:

Installation: The tarball contains usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/unicodez and etc/skel/.XCompose. It should be extracted in the root of your file system by the root user (sudo tar -xjf unicodez.tar.bz2 -C /). Then the /etc/skel/.XCompose file should be copied to your home directory (cp /etc/skel/.XCompose ~/). Lastly, the new layout must be activated (setxkbmap us+unicodez). The layout will only fully take effect for applications started after the switch.

Automatically activating the layout: setxkbmap affects only the current X session, so if you always want to use Unicode Easy, you'll want to run the setxkbmap command automatically when your X session starts. This can be done a few different ways; consult the documentation for your desktop environment.

Activating the layout system-wide using HAL: Newer versions of the X.org X11 server support hot-plugging of input devices using HAL. You can configure HAL to tell XKB to use Unicode Easy for all keyboards attached to your system. Create a file /etc/hal/fdi/policy/unicodez.fdi with the following contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<deviceinfo version="0.2">
        <device>
                <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
                        <append key="input.xkb.layout" type="string">+unicodez</append>
                </match>
        </device>
</deviceinfo>

Selecting the layout in the KDE 4 Keyboard Layout module: It is possible to select the Unicode Easy Keyboard Layout in the KDE 4 Keyboard Layout System Settings Module (System Settings > Regional & Language > Keyboard Layout), though this is not necessary if you configured HAL as above. To make the layout available, you need to add the following element to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml as a child of xkbConfigRegistry/layoutList/layout[configItem/name="us"]/variantList:

<variant>
	<configItem>
		<name>unicodez</name>
		<description>Unicode Easy</description>
	</configItem>
</variant>
<variant>
	<configItem>
		<name>unicodez-dvorak</name>
		<description>Unicode Easy (Dvorak)</description>
	</configItem>
</variant>

And add the following lines to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us:

partial alphanumeric_keys keypad_keys
xkb_symbols "unicodez" {
	include "us(basic)"
	include "unicodez(us)"
};

partial alphanumeric_keys keypad_keys
xkb_symbols "unicodez-dvorak" {
	include "us(dvorak)"
	include "unicodez(dvorak)"
};

Then in the KDE Keyboard Layout panel, select "Enable keyboard layouts" and choose "Evdev-managed keyboard" as your "Keyboard model". Then, if there are no layouts listed in "Active layouts", select "USA" from the list of "Available layouts" and click the right arrow button to add it. Then select the "USA" layout in the list of "Active layouts" and choose "Unicode Easy" from the drop-down list labeled "Layout variant". Finally click "Apply" to save your changes. Now KDE 4 will automatically switch your X session to the Unicode Easy Keyboard Layout whenever you log in. Sweet!

Getting GTK+ apps to use ~/.XCompose: For some unknown reason, GTK+ ignores X11's compose support and implements its own (unconfigurable) compose functionality. Thankfully, you can force GTK+ to use the standard X11 compose support by exporting GTK_IM_MODULE=xim to your X session's environment.

Unicode Easy Keyboard Layout for XKB (2.55 KiB)
MD5 Hash: 4558cd257c9020aa5683783789602f81

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