Keymaps

To start working with keyboard layout the lowest-risk command is setxkbmap(1). setxkbmap temporarily maps the keyboard to use options specified on the command line. Changes will not persist when you restart X (i.e., log out and log back in). This is a good place to start experimenting with configuration and layouts.

The options that can be applied with setxkbmap are found in xkeyboard-config(7). For whatever reason, neither my Debian nor Arch box has this man file. I found one copy online and made sure to snapshot it in the internet archive—which is a project to which I plan to donate more heavily in the upcoming year.

To view currently applied options use: setxkbmap -query which should output something like:

rules:      evdev
model:      pc105
layout:     us

To achieve this with setxkbmap you would type in your xterm: setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us

This is a pretty vanilla setup—when you setup your computer and accept the defaults, this is what you get.

"é" == [Right Alt] + [e]
"ñ" == [Right Alt] + [n]
"ö" == [Right Alt] + [p]

setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us -variant altgr-intl

setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option compose:rctrl

# Quick ssh key output
<Multi_key> <k> <e> <y> : "https://gist.github.com/thcipriani/5e95399457da6544a4cb"

<Multi_key> <S> <N> <O> <W>     : "❄"   U2603
<Multi_key> <p> <l> <a> <n> <e> : "✈"   U2708
<Multi_key> <z> <a> <p>         : "⚡"   U26A1

# prefix 'm' = mathematical symbols
<Multi_key> <m> <d> : "Δ"
<Multi_key> <m> <e> : "ϵ"
<Multi_key> <m> <l> : "λ"

# misc
<Multi_key> <colon> <bar> <bar> : "ಠ_ಠ"
<Multi_key> <less> <3> : "❤"

setxkbmap \
  -model pc105 \
  -layout us \
  -variant altgr-intl \
  -option compose:rctrl \
  -option ctrl:nocaps

git clone https://github.com/alols/xcape.git .
cd xcape && make

xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape'

setxkbmap \
  -model pc105 \
  -layout us \
  -variant altgr-intl \
  -option compose:rctrl \
  -option ctrl:nocaps \
  -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

Key Autorepeat

There are some keyboard options that cannot be set via setxkbmap. The AutoRepeat option was removed from the X keyboard driver (kbd(4)) as of version 1.4.0.

The only recourse is using xset(1), the X user-preference utility. An infinitely customizable keyrate is one of the many luxuries of using a Linux keyboard.

There are two main options that matter for me in xset that affect the autorepeat rate: AutoRepeatDelay and AutoRepeatRate

The syntax for xset autorepeat is:

xset [-r keycode] rate [AutoRepeatRate] [AutoRepeatDelay]

By omitting the -r keycode you apply the rate to all keys (e.g., xset -r 10 will apply the rate settings only to the “1” key). The default AutoRepeatDelay is 660ms and the default AutoRepeatRate is 25Hz, which is fine, but after tweaking this rate and living with it for a few days it will seem unbearably slow. My settings are:

xset r rate 330 75

These settings half the time I spend waiting for a key to auto-repeat, and triple the rate at which that auto-repeat fires.

While mentioning xset it’s also worth mentioning that I hate HATE the system beep. It’s that beep that happens when you double-tab Tab in Bash, or try to backspace beyond the beginning of a line (which happens a lot with a fast AutoRepeatRate). You can probably disable it many ways in X, but I use:

xset -b

Persistence

By placing the setxkbmap command, the xcape command, and the two xset commands shown above into ~/.xinitrc, that configuration will load whenever X is started.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# ~/.xinitrc
#
has?() {
    command -v "$1" > /dev/null 2>&1
}

# Keyboard stuffs
# ---
# * use right-alt as Alt-Gr key ($ → £)
# * use right ctrl key as compose (ctrl 1 2 → ½)
# * use ctrl+alt+bksp to restart `X`
# * Capslock → Ctrl
# * Alt-Gr + Space = nbsp/Alt-Gr + Shift + Space = shy nbsp
setxkbmap \
  -layout us \
  -variant altgr-intl \
  -option compose:rctrl \
  -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp \
  -option ctrl:nocaps

xset -b            # Stop beeping at me (A.K.A turn off PC speaker)
xset r rate 330 60 # Set keyboard repeat rate

has? xcape && xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape' # https://github.com/alols/xcape

~/.xinitrc will NOT, however, keep those configurations when an external USB keyboard is added to the mix.

The configuration loaded by setxkbmap can easily become persistent since it is part of the X keyboard driver. I have the following in a file at /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-keyboard.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
  Identifier "Muh Keyboard"
  MatchIsKeyboard "true"
  Option "xkblayout" "us"
  Option "xkbvariant" "altgr-intl"
  Option "Xkboptions" "compose:rctrl"
  Option "Xkboptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
  Option "Xkboptions" "ctrl:nocaps"
EndSection

The xset commands and xcape daemon are a bit more difficult to persist when attaching external keyboards.

In the lazy past, I created a file in my ~/bin/ directory (which, in my case, is on my $PATH) that I ran manually whenever a new keyboard was attached.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# ~/bin/keyboard—In case of new keyboard, break gla...er...I mean...run this.
#

(
  sleep 1

  DISPLAY=:0.0 xset -b
  DISPLAY=:0.0 xset r rate 330 60
  xcape -e 'Control_L=Escape'
  DISPLAY=:0.0 notify-send "External USB Connected"
) &

Getting over to my terminal and typing: keyboard everytime I attached a new keyboard is pretty far from perfect.

So what are my other options? Initially, I thought about doing something with acpid(8) (since I use that a ton), which would have been easy enough. acpid notifies user-space utilities about system events, which includes when devices are attached.

After reading a great post from Pat Brisbin about udev events, I thought (and think) that’s the answer. You can probably tell that my ~/bin/keyboard script has evolved to accommodate what he outlined in his article. In any event (pun intended), I created a file at /etc/udev/rules.d/99-usb-keyboards.rules with the following contents:

SUBSYSTEM=="input", ACTION=="add", RUN+="/bin/su tyler --shell=/bin/bash -c /home/tyler/bin/keyboard"

Which seems to do the trick!

The configuration you see above is the result of way too much thinking about how I use my keyboard. Now, I just need to get this configuration to work without X Server…le sigh