Kalamine

A cross-platform Keyboard Layout Maker, blatantly stolen from the qwerty-lafayette project.

Basic Usage

Draw your keyboard layout in ASCII-art and include it in a TOML document:

name = "qwerty-ansi"
name8 = "q-ansi"
description = "QWERTY-US layout"
version = "1.0.0"
geometry = "ANSI"

base = '''
┌─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┬─────┲━━━━━━━━━━┓
│ ~   │ !   │ @   │ #   │ $   │ %   │ ^   │ &   │ *   │ (   │ )   │ _   │ +   ┃          ┃
│ `   │ 1   │ 2   │ 3   │ 4   │ 5   │ 6   │ 7   │ 8   │ 9   │ 0   │ -   │ =   ┃ ⌫        ┃
┢━━━━━┷━━┱──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┺━━┯━━━━━━━┩
┃        ┃ Q   │ W   │ E   │ R   │ T   │ Y   │ U   │ I   │ O   │ P   │ {   │ }   │ |     │
┃ ↹      ┃     │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │ [   │ ]   │ \     │
┣━━━━━━━━┻┱────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┬────┴┲━━━━┷━━━━━━━┪
┃         ┃ A   │ S   │ D   │ F   │ G   │ H   │ J   │ K   │ L   │ :   │ "   ┃            ┃
┃ ⇬       ┃     │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │     │ ;   │ '   ┃ ⏎          ┃
┣━━━━━━━━━┻━━┱──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┬──┴──┲━━┻━━━━━━━━━━━━┫
┃            ┃ Z   │ X   │ C   │ V   │ B   │ N   │ M   │ <   │ >   │ ?   ┃               ┃
┃ ⇧          ┃     │     │     │     │     │     │     │ ,   │ .   │ /   ┃ ⇧             ┃
┣━━━━━━━┳━━━━┻━━┳━━┷━━━━┱┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─────┴─┲━━━┷━━━┳━┷━━━━━╋━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┫
┃       ┃       ┃       ┃                                ┃       ┃       ┃       ┃       ┃
┃ Ctrl  ┃ super ┃ Alt   ┃ ␣                              ┃ Alt   ┃ super ┃ menu  ┃ Ctrl  ┃
┗━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┹────────────────────────────────┺━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┛
'''

Build it:

kalamine qwerty-ansi.toml

Get all keyboard drivers:

dist/
├── q-ansi.klc        # Windows
├── q-ansi.keylayout  # macOS
├── q-ansi.xkb        # Linux
└── q-ansi.json

Install

Windows

download a keyboard layout installer:
- either MSKLC — proprietary freeware, compatible with Windows XP to 10
- or KbdEdit — proprietary shareware, compatible with Windows XP to 10
run this installer to generate a setup program;
run the setup program;
the keyboard layout appears in the language bar.

macOS

copy your *.keylayout file into:
- either ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts for the current user only,
- or /Library/Keyboard Layouts for all users;
restart your session;
the keyboard layout appears in the “Language and Text” preferences, “Input Methods” tab.

Linux

On Xorg, *.xkb keyboard descriptions can be applied with xkbcomp:

xkbcomp -w10 layout.xkb $DISPLAY

To get back to the standard us-qwerty layout:

setxkbmap us

XKalamine

xkalamine is a Linux-specific tool for managing keyboard layouts with xkb.

To apply a keyboard layout in user-space:

# equivalent to `xkbcomp -w10 layout.xkb $DISPLAY`
xkalamine apply layout.toml

This has limitations: it doesn’t work on Wayland and the keyboard layout doesn’t show up in the Gnome keyboard manager. Besides, on some distros, media keys might stop working.

The proper way to install a keyboard layout on Linux is to modify directly the files in /usr/share/X11/xkb. This is where xkalamine comes in:

sudo xkalamine install layout.toml

There’s also:

xkalamine list to enumerate all installed Kalamine layouts
xkalamine remove to uninstall a Kalamine layout