Changing one character in keyboard layout

keyboard-layoutx11xkb

I edited the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us and added a definition with my new layout as follows

partial alphanumeric_keys modifier_keys
xkb_symbols "us_pl" {
    include "us(basic)"
    name[Group1]= "English (with Polish characters)";
    key <AD06> { [ z, Z, zabovedot, Zabovedot ] };
};

I commented the line 27 (for xkb_symbols "basic")

// key <AD06> { [   y,  Y   ] };

Then I compiled the changed layouts

$ xkbcomp -xkm -m basic us
$ xkbcomp -xkm -m us_pl us

I set the new layout

$ setxkbmap 'us(us_pl)'

$ setxkbmap -query
rules:      evdev
model:      pc105
layout:     us(us_pl)

Now, I'd like to test my newly defined character but nothing changed. Where am I doing a fault?
Note, that I'd like to change more characters later, so I'd like this example to work.

OS: Ubuntu 12.04

Best Answer

After searching I have found this similar question, which solves part of my problem. There is still the problem with Alt-gr key, which is not working.

I will let this answer here for a while, for others to see the solution and then I will delete it as duplicate.

Related Solutions

Adding a custom keyboard layout (and setting it as the default)

Add an entry for the layout to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg.lst under ! variant and add the layout to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us. Then it will be a variant of the us layout. Format of the entry to xorg.lst should be obvious from other entries. If you want the layout listed as a separate language, put the entry in xorg.lst under ! layout and the layout to a separate file name of which is the name of the layout.

Custom keyboard layout without root

For some reason it works if you -print and pipe the output to xkbcomp:

setxkbmap \
    -I ~/.config/xkb/ \
    -rules evdev-local \
    -layout "my-us(mdvp)" \
    -print |
    xkbcomp -I ~/.config/xkb/ - "$DISPLAY"

I don’t think there is anything wrong with your layout. I tried setting it up with setxkbmap directly, but even with the -verbose option the output is not helpful:

Warning! Multiple definitions of rules file
         Using command line, ignoring X server
Warning! Multiple definitions of keyboard layout
         Using command line, ignoring X server
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes:   evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types:      complete
compat:     complete
symbols:    pc+my-us(mdvp)+inet(evdev)+terminate(ctrl_alt_bksp)
geometry:   pc(pc104)
Error loading new keyboard description

This is with the default verbose level. But even if I set it to 10, which is apparently the max level, it just outputs “locale is C” as well as where it tries to look for the rules file, in addition to the above. It does not output anything more about why it fails to load the keyboard description.

One of the reasons why I prefer to pipe to xkbcomp instead of just using setxkbmap is because the former seems to give better error messages.