libxkbcommon is a keyboard keymap compiler and support library which processes a reduced subset of keymaps as defined by the XKB (X Keyboard Extension) specification. It also contains a module for handling Compose and dead keys and a separate library for listing available keyboard layouts.
- Introduction to XKB: to learn the essentials of XKB.
- User-configuration: instructions to add a custom layout or option.
- Quick Guide: introduction on how to use this library.
libxkbcommon is built with Meson:
meson setup build
meson compile -C build
meson test -C build # Run the tests.
To build for use with Wayland, you can disable X11 support while still using the X11 keyboard configuration resource files thusly:
meson setup build \
-Denable-x11=false \
-Dxkb-config-root=/usr/share/X11/xkb \
-Dx-locale-root=/usr/share/X11/locale
meson compile -C build
While libxkbcommon's API is somewhat derived from the classic XKB API as found
in X11/extensions/XKB.h and friends, it has been substantially reworked to
expose fewer internal details to clients.
See the API Documentation.
libxkbcommon does not distribute a keymap dataset itself, other than for testing purposes. The most common dataset is xkeyboard-config, which is used by all current distributions for their X11 XKB data. More information on xkeyboard-config is available here: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/XKeyboardConfig
The dataset for Compose is distributed in libX11, as part of the X locale data.
See Compatibility notes.
An extremely rudimentary homepage can be found at https://xkbcommon.org
xkbcommon is maintained in git at https://github.com/xkbcommon/libxkbcommon
Patches are always welcome, and may be sent to either [email protected] or [email protected] or in a GitHub pull request.
Bug reports (and usage questions) are also welcome, and may be filed at GitHub.
The maintainers are
- Daniel Stone [email protected]
- Ran Benita [email protected]
Many thanks are due to Dan Nicholson for his heroic work in getting xkbcommon off the ground initially.