Modifying Keyboard Layout in Wayland

keyboardkeyboard-layoutwayland

My laptop came with a PrintScreen key (on the right hand side of KB between to the Alt_R and Control_R). In Xorg, I've been using xmodmap to swap the printscreen with a menu key:

/usr/bin/xmodmap -e "keycode 107 = Menu"

Problem is that xmodmap, xdotool and anything else that relies on intercepting and injecting keystrokes doesn't work anymore on Wayland due to security restrictions. gnome-tweak-tool had (out of the box) a few nifty xkb based modifications that allowed swapping out some specific keys (like capslock with escape) but it didn't have the modification I was looking for.

I was wondering if there was a way of swapping the printscr for a menu key by modifying the keyboard layout files? Are they text files or are they binary files that I'd have to re-compile?

There's setkeycodes and getkeycodes in /usr/bin, does anyone know what these commands do?

Best Answer

As I've stated in my question, there is already xkb which already has alot options for modifying the keyboard. It wasn't an option for me because the only option to modify the printscr key, replaced it with Win_R. Gunnar Hjalmarsson on this thread suggested to me that I modify xkb's modifications so that the printscr/win_r would do printscr/menu instead. We worked out a solution together and I'm going to retransmit it here:

In terminal, enter:

sudo su
nano /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/altwin

At the bottom of the file you will find:

// Win is mapped to the PrtSc key (and the usual Win key).
partial modifier_keys
xkb_symbols "prtsc_rwin" {
    replace key <PRSC> { [ Super_R, Super_R ] };
    modifier_map Mod4 { <PRSC>, <RWIN> };
};

Delete this section and replace it with this:

// Menu is mapped to the PrtSc key (and the usual Win key).
xkb_symbols "prtsc_rwin" {
     replace key <PRSC> { [ Menu, Menu ] };
     modifier_map Mod4 { <PRSC>, <MENU> };
};

To delete in nano, use backspace key (highlighting and deleting doesn't work). To paste, use shift-ctrl-v. To exit and save, press ctrl-x, select yes to overwrite and press enter.

Reboot. In Gnome/Ubuntu Go to gnome-tweak-tools In tweak tools go to Keyboard & Mouse section, press the Additional Layout Options button and expand Alt/Win key behavior. Selecting the option on the very bottom: Win is mapped to printscr (remember that we've modified just this behavior to swap print and Menu instead of print and Win). (I'm sure there is a way of turning on the modded xkb option in KDE but I don't use it, so I can't give you the exact procedure).

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