XKB Layout US - German Umlauts

Custom US based keyboard layout adding Umlauts via the right key. Use this with xkb on Linux/Unix Systems and X11. Once installed the layout will show up as `English (US, intl., German) in your layout selector.

Tested with Arch Linux only.

Installation

IMPORTANT: You're about to mess around with system files controlling the way your keyboard works. If things go south you may end up with a very strange state. Whatever you do, create a backup of any file you touch.

# Create a backup (Example)
sudo cp /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml /root/

Append the contents of intlde to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us:

sudo cat intlde >> /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us

Next, make the layout available to the various keyboard managers (e.g. KDE, Gnome, etc.) by adding the following block to the variants section of the US Layout. This is a bit tricky as you need to find the right spot in the XMl file first.

Variants are defined under layoutList -> layout. If you can't find that run a search for US, intl.. This should put you in the right spot. Just append the variant block below that:

<variant>
  <configItem>
    <name>intlde</name>
    <description>English (US, intl., German)</description>
  </configItem>
</variant>

Last but not least, activate the layout using your Desktop's layout manager.

X.org config

You may choose to set the layout though the cofiguration of X.org directly. The file 10-keyboard.conf offers an example configuration. This way works regardless of the window managers capabilities.

Usage

Once active, you'll be able to type äÄ, öÖ, üÜ and ß holding down your right alt key and optionally the shift key. No compose key nonesense but smooth on the fly typing.

Combination	Result
RAlt + a	ä
RAlt + o	ö
RAlt + u	ü
RAlt + Shift + a	Ä
RAlt + Shift + o	Ö
RAlt + Shift + u	Ü
RAlt + s	ß

Have fun!

Troubleshooting

So far this is a "works form me" repository. Feel free to open issues if things don't work fo you. Make sure to mention your exact OS versions and I'll see what I can do for you.

The keyboard layout doesn't show up in my Keyboard manager

You may have some cache files that need to be deleted first. Try: