/xkb-switch-i3

Switch your X keyboard layouts from the command line

Primary LanguageC++GNU General Public License v3.0GPL-3.0

Xkb-switch-i3

This i3-flavored version of xkb-switch is capable of switching layout groups automatically in i3wm. It subscribes to i3wm events and, when a window is focused, switches to the last active layout for the window.

NOTE: Starting from version 1.6.1 xkb-switch-i3 has it's own versioning.

Installation

For Arch Linux xkb-switch-i3 and xkb-switch-i3-git packages are available in AUR.

Dependencies for building from source:

  • i3-wm
  • jsoncpp
  • libsigc++
  • libx11
  • libxkbfile
# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/zebradil/xkb-switch-i3
# Init submodules
git submodule update --init
# Prepare
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
# Build
make
# Install
make install

Usage

Run it in terminal and try changing windows and layouts to see how it works.

xkb-switch --i3

To have it started with i3, add the following to the configuration:

exec_always --no-startup-id xkb-switch --i3

Original README

by J. Bromley, S. Mironov, Alexei Rad'kov

xkb-switch is a C++ program that allows to query and change the XKB layout state. Originally ruby-based code written by J.Broomley.

  • XKeyboard.cpp Implementation for XKB query/set class
  • XKbSwitch.cpp Main program
  • XKbSwitchApi.cpp The Vim API bindings

The C++ class has no special dependencies on anything outside of X-related libraries, so it can be easily used with other software.

Xkb-switch is licensed under the GNU GPLv3, see COPYING for details.

Installing

Package libxkbfile-dev (or libxkbfile-devel for Fedora) needs to be installed to build the program.

To build the program manually, unpack the tarball and cd to source directory. Nix users may use nix-shell to enter the minimally sufficient development shell or nix-build to build the sources. Other distributions typically require the following commands to build in install the program:

$ mkdir build && cd build
$ cmake ..
$ make

In order to install, use your system's package manager or default to the following:

$ sudo make install

On some distributions, you may need to update the program cache if it's the first time you're installing this program

$ sudo ldconfig

Usage

$ xkb-switch --help

Usage: xkb-switch -s ARG            Sets current layout group to ARG
       xkb-switch -l|--list         Displays all layout groups
       xkb-switch -h|--help         Displays this message
       xkb-switch -v|--version      Shows version number
       xkb-switch -w|--wait [-p]    Waits for group change and exits
       xkb-switch -W                Infinitely waits for group change
       xkb-switch -n|--next         Switch to the next layout group
       xkb-switch [-p]              Displays current layout group

A note on xkb-switch -x Command line option xkb-switch -x has been removed recently. Please, use setxkbmap -query or setxkbmap -print to obtain debug information.

VIM integration

Xkb-switch goes with a library libxkbswitch.so which can be called from within Vim scripts like this:

let g:XkbSwitchLib = "/path/to/libxkbswitch.so"
echo libcall(g:XkbSwitchLib, 'Xkb_Switch_getXkbLayout', '')
call libcall(g:XkbSwitchLib, 'Xkb_Switch_setXkbLayout', 'us')

See also article in Russian describing complex solution.

Layout groups

xkb-group.sh can help you to manage layout groups. Just run it and send some input at it's stdin every time you want to trigger layouts from primary to secondary and back. For example:

$ xkb-group.sh us ru
switch # switch from us to ru or from current layout to us
switch # switch from ru to us or from us to ru

# from another terminal
$ xkb-switch -s de # switch to 'de' layout, change secondary layout to 'de'

# back to terminal running `xkb-group.sh'
switch # switch from de to us
switch # switch from us to de

Bugs or Problems

Admittedly, I only tested with a few different layouts that I used. If you find any bugs let me know by submitting an issue or via grrwlf@gmail.com.

References:

Regards, Sergey.