README

Description

xkblayout-state is a small command-line program to get/set the current XKB keyboard layout.

It's a thin wrapper around a slightly version of Jay Bromley's XKeyboard class, the original of which is included in http://members.dslextreme.com/users/jbromley/files/ruby-xkb.tar.bz2.

Compilation and installation

• Make sure x11 development libraries are installed (eg. apt install libx11-dev on Ubuntu)
• To compile just say: make
• To install copy the resulting executable xkblayout-state somewhere in your path

Alternatively with docker: docker build .

Usage

xkblayout-state can be used to either print keyboard layout information on stdout or set the currently active layout.

Printing keyboard layout information

The command to print keyboard layout information is

xkblayout-state print format

format is printed to stdout with the following substitutions (to include a literal % use %%):

• %c -> The number of the currently active layout
• %n -> The name of the currently active layout
• %s -> The symbol of the currently active layout
• %v -> The variant of the currently active layout (this is empty if no variant is specified)
• %e -> The variant of the currently active layout (this is the same as %s if no variant is specified)
• %C -> The number of defined layouts
• %N -> A list containing the names of the layouts (one per line)
• %S -> A list containing the symbols of the layouts (one per line)
• %V -> A list containing the variants of the layouts (one per line; an empty line if no variant is specified for the respective layout)
• %E -> A list containing the variants of the layouts (one per line; if no variant is specified for the respective symbol, the layout symbol is used)

Setting the active keyboard layout

The command to set the currently active keyboard layout is

xkblayout-state set [+-]number

number is the number of the layout to activate. It corresponds to the layouts in the order they appear in, for example, xkblayout-state print %N, starting from zero. If number begins with a plus or minus sign, the number'th layout counting from the currently active layout down or up the list is activated. It wraps around if the list is exceeded.

License

xkblayout-state is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

xkblayout-state is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/