gxkb

X11 keyboard layout indicator and switcher

Description

gxkb is a tiny indicator applet which allows to quickly switch between different keyboard layouts in X.
A flag corresponding to the country of the active layout is shown in the indicator area.
The applet is written in C and uses GTK+ library and therefore does not depend on any GNOME components.

Dependencies

GTK3
libwnck-3
libxklavier16
libayatana-appindicator3

Installing

Debian and Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install gxkb

Fedora

sudo dnf install gxkb

Building from source

Install dependencies

Debian

sudo apt-get install libwnck-3-dev libxklavier-dev libgtk-3-dev dh-autoreconf dh-make devscripts fakeroot

For AppIndicator support:

sudo apt-get install libayatana-appindicator3-dev

Build

wget https://github.com/zen-tools/gxkb/archive/master.tar.gz -O gxkb.tar.gz
tar xzf gxkb.tar.gz
cd gxkb-master
./autogen.sh
./configure

For AppIndicator support:

./configure --enable-appindicator=yes

Then:

make && sudo make install

Usage

Show version and features
```
gxkb -v
```
Run from a terminal
```
gxkb &
```

Features

AppIndicator support

To switch that off use the following command during building phase:
```
./configure --enable-appindicator=no
```
Custom flags support

Put your flag images in .local/share/gxkb/flags in PNG format
with the names like <country code>.png, e.g. us.png, ru.png, ua.png
and the sizes of 24x24 pixels each
Scrolling support

Switch layouts by scrolling while hovering over the flag
Using Scroll Lock led to indicate alternate layouts

Can be changed in .config/gxkb/gxkb.cfg

Configuration

Configuration is done via config file: .config/gxkb/gxkb.cfg

The most interesting options are:
layouts=us,ru,ua
toggle_option=grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

Instead of grp:alt_shift_toggle you can use whatever the following command gives you: grep grp:.*toggle /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst

Known issues

In Elementary OS Freya gxkb does not work. Trying to figure out why.
In Gnome2/Gnome3, Unity, E17, possibly in KDE3/KDE4:
Q: The layout does not get changed properly while switching between windows.
A: In your DE settings find keyboard layout control settings, disable the inheriting of the layouts from parent window and disable splitting layouts between windows.
In Gnome3/Unity:
Q: The layout icon is not displayed in system tray area.
A: Due to different versions of Gnome3 there is no easy answer, Google might help to find the right one. But in fact gxkb works under the hood, so you can use the Gnome3/Unity system indicators for icon displaying, just don't forget to disable the splitting layouts between different windows.
In XFCE 4.12:
Q: The layout icon is not displayed in system tray area.
A: In "sessions and startup" settings try to find and disable indicator‑application‑service.
More details here.
In Unity + AppIndicator:
Q: The layout switching does not work.
A: It can happen when the system layout switcher indicator‑keyboard uses the same key combination.
One possible solution to this may be to assign an unused key combination for indicator‑keyboard.
Another solution may be to remove the package indicator‑keyboard, but that will also remove the Unity control center, which will be replaced by a Gnome control center.

jamazi/gxkb