XFCE4 – Set Up XKB Plugin to Remember Settings Over Reboots

Well, the right answer is: There is a typo. It's not Q U ERTY, but Q W ERTY! I promise next time I'll ask at the morning, being fresh.

However, until I realized it's typo, I searched and experimented even more and I came up with a different, less hackish solution:

I found out there is a /etc/default/keyboard file with keyboard settings. If I edit it and then dare to touch Keyboard Layouts Plugin, my changes are preserved even after multiple restarts. No need for any hacks with setxkbmap.

I edited the file in a following way:

# Check /usr/share/doc/keyboard-configuration/README.Debian for
# documentation on what to do after having modified this file.

# The following variables describe your keyboard and can have the same
# values as the XkbModel, XkbLayout, XkbVariant and XkbOptions options
# in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="cz,us"
XKBVARIANT="qwerty"
XKBOPTIONS="grp:alt_shift_toggle"

# If you don't want to use the XKB layout on the console, you can
# specify an alternative keymap.  Make sure it will be accessible
# before /usr is mounted.
# KMAP=/etc/console-setup/defkeymap.kmap.gz

This works. Hope it helps someone!

See also:

• http://ubuntu.sabza.org/2006/10/13/xubuntu-easily-switch-keyboard-layout/
• http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2011/12/24/getting-your-way-with-setxkbmap/

The man page of xfce4-screenshooter mentions some of its options, including this one:

• -s (--save): Directory where the screenshot will be saved

To save to a fixed screenshot directory, go to Setting Manager -> Keyboard -> Application Shortcuts and click Add command. Add this command:

xfce4-screenshooter -s ~/screenshots

Assign it to any key you like, like PrtScr.

PNG is the only output format possible for now, but you could write a script that converts the screenshots automatically to JPG every time you take a screenshot:

#!/bin/bash
mkdir -p ~/screenshots
xfce4-screenshooter -fs ~/screenshots
cd ~/screenshots
mogrify -format jpg *.png

Save the script as shoot.sh and assign a shortcut key (CTRL+PrtScr works fine). The command to enter is sh shoot.sh. If you don't need the PNG files and you only want JPG files, you can add

rm *.png

to the script.

E-mail integration with Thunderbird:

#!/bin/bash
SCREENSHOTS=~/screenshots
mkdir -p $SCREENSHOTS
cd $SCREENSHOTS

xfce4-screenshooter -fs $SCREENSHOTS
SCREENSHOTPNG=`find . -type f -mmin -1`
SCREENSHOTPNG=`basename $SCREENSHOTPNG`
mogrify -format jpg $SCREENSHOTPNG
#uncomment the line below (remove the #) for even smaller files (and comment the line above):
#mogrify -resize 50% -format jpg $SCREENSHOTPNG
rm $SCREENSHOTPNG

SCREENSHOTJPG=`find . -type f -mmin -1`
SCREENSHOTJPG=`basename $SCREENSHOTJPG`
thunderbird --compose "attachment=$SCREENSHOTS/$SCREENSHOTJPG"

Thunderbird supports more default fields, see all parameters here.

Important Mogrify is part of ImageMagick, so you need to have ImageMagick installed. On Ubuntu, you can install it with sudo apt-get install imagemagick