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keyd-setup.md

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keyd setup

Guides related to my keyd setup.

Latin chars with keyd

This guide is specific to xorg only

Before discovering keyd I had to constantly switch between english and spanish layouts in order for me to write words like mañana but at the same time use chars like <>|~... this was a very painful workflow.

Now instead of switching between language layouts I just map all these special characters (á, é, í, ó, ú, ñ) to a <modifier>+<letter> combination. For example, pressing alt+a writes á. This is far more quickly and pleasant than having to switch layouts and then remember to switch then back.

Process to map new chars

My process to map new chars is as follows:

  1. First on /etc/keyd/default.conf I add the new special char that I want to use:
[ids]

*

[main]

leftalt = layer(spanish)

[spanish:A]

# Map a to á
a = á

...

# Map n to ñ
n = ñ

[spanish+shift]

# Map a to Á
a = Á

...

# Map n to Ñ
n = Ñ
  1. That's not all, you need to find a keyd-specific XKB sequence string for your char (á, ñ, etc...) from here: /usr/share/keyd/keyd.compose and then copy it to your .XCompose file, usually in ~/.XCompose or create a new one if it doesn't exists.

Example

Find and copy your char from the /usr/share/keyd/keyd.compose file (that file is automatically generated by keyd upon installation):

...
<Cancel> <0> <1> <1> : "¥"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <2> : "¦"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <3> : "§"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <4> : "¨"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <5> : "©"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <6> : "ª"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <7> : "«"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <8> : "¬"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <9> : "­"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <a> : "®"
<Cancel> <0> <2> <p> : "á" <- copy this
<Cancel> <0> <3> <5> : "ñ" <- copy this
<Cancel> <0> <1> <t> : "Á" <- copy this
<Cancel> <0> <2> <9> : "Ñ" <- copy this
...
  1. Paste your keyd-specific XKB sequence string on your ~/.XCompose file like this:
<Cancel> <0> <2> <p> : "á"
<Cancel> <0> <3> <5> : "ñ"
<Cancel> <0> <1> <t> : "Á"
<Cancel> <0> <2> <9> : "Ñ"
  1. Finally you must logout and login again so the ~/.XCompose can be re-executed by your system again.

Important

Even thought the man keyd page recommends this:

Unicode Support If keyd encounters a valid UTF8 sequence as a right hand value, it will try and translate that sequence into a macro which emits a keyd-specific XKB sequence. In order for this to work, the sequences defined in the compose file shipped with keyd (/usr/share/keyd/keyd.compose) must be accessible. This can be achieved globally by copying the file to the appropriate location in /usr/share/X11/locale, or on a per-user basis by symlinking it to ˜/.XCompose. E.g. ln -s /usr/share/keyd/keyd.compose ˜/.XCompose Additionally you will need to be using the default US layout on your display server. Users of non-english layouts are advised to set their layout within keyd (see Layouts) to avoid conflicts between the display server layout and keyd's unicode functionality. Note: You may have to restart your applications for this to take effect. Note 2: The generated compose sequences are affected by modifiers in the normal way. If you want shift to produce a different symbol, you will need to define a custom shift layer (see the included layout files for an example).

That was actually a pretty bad idea for me because my i3 keymaps (and the whole i3 app) stopped working so that's why I don't symlink the whole keyd.compose file and instead just copy the lines that I need from it.