Custom keyboard layout variant

Since I normally use a swedish keyboard layout, writing braces, parenthesis and brackets kind of sucks. I decided to remap them to

leftbrace to AltGr+q  
rightbrace to AltGr+r  
leftbracket to AltGr+w  
rightbracket to AltGr+e  
leftparen to AltGr+a  
rightparent to AltGr+s  

The first method I tried was to run a script in .kde4/Autostart that runs xmodmap on a custom .Xmodmap where I captured the keypress event with xev. This was quite easy and worked as expected in just a few minutes. However, once I logged out and the logged in again I noticed a severe delay before I could use the keyboard. After some thinking and googling I came to understand that the remapping of the keys was sort of tinkering with the keymap behing the X servers back which created a great deal of sync operations and used a lot of resources. The next strategy was to create the layout to be available before the X server starts. Here is how:

$EDITOR /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/se

add the following:

partial alphanumeric_keys
    xkb_symbols "se_aron" {
        name[Group1]="Swedish (aron)";
        include "se(basic)"
        key <AE07>  { [         7,          slash                        ]  };
        key <AE08>  { [         8                                        ]  };
        key <AE09>  { [         9                                        ]  };
        key <AE10>  { [         0,          equal                        ]  };
        key <AD01>  { [         q,          Q,      braceleft            ]  };
        key <AD02>  { [         w,          W,      bracketleft          ]  };
        key <AD03>  { [         e,          E,      bracketright         ]  };
        key <AD04>  { [         r,          R,      braceright           ]  };
        key <AC01>  { [         a,          A,      parenleft            ]  };
        key <AC02>  { [         s,          S,      parenright           ]  };
        include "kpdl(comma)"
        include "level3(ralt_switch)"
    };

Found the codes here. Now the definition exists, but it also needs to be added to a list that the systemsettings in kde can select from:

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

or with evdev

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst

Add the entry

se_aron         se: Swedish (aron)

And also, not quite sure this is needed but for good measure if nothing else: Open

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.xml

or with evdev

/usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml

And, under the configitem with name ‘se’, add a variant like so:

<variant>
  <configItem>
    <name>se_aron</name>
    <description>Swedish (aron)</description>
  </configItem>
</variant>

Now, the next time you log on to a kde session (the X server needs to be restarted first) you will be able to select the custom variant. Update: when using fluxbox the xmodmap works just fine. .Xmodmap follows below. I also moved slash to AltGr+d:

keycode   8 =
keycode   9 = Escape NoSymbol Escape
keycode  16 = 7
keycode  24 = q Q slash question braceleft Greek_OMEGA
keycode  25 = w W comma less bracketleft Lstroke
keycode  26 = e E period greater bracketright cent dead_abovedot periodcentered
keycode  27 = r R p P braceright registered
keycode  38 = a A a A parenleft
keycode  39 = s S s S parenright
keycode  40 = d D d D slash

The rest is default.

Tweet