How does adding and using a custom keyboard-layout work?

Guix
1

On my previous OS I had created my own custom keyboard-layout, to which I even added it as a new (constructed) language, mostly so that I could more easily use diacritics in case I want to type in another European language, but also create my own attempt at a unified EU language that’s not bound to qwerty or dependent on the US.

I created files and a script that would do the following:

  • 00-keyboard.conf copied to /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
  • yr copied to /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols
  • yr-af.map.gz copied to /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak
  • KEYMAP=yr-af copied to /etc/vconsole.conf
  • yrdev.xml inserted into <layoutList> of usr/share/X11/xkb/rues/evdev.xml`

How would go about this in Guix?

2

Maybe you can read about it

3

A good start.

That explains that the xkeyboard-config package contains all the keyboard configurations and that /run/current-system/profile/share/keymaps folder contains the available keymaps used.

Unfortunately, I seem to have have two xkeyboard-config folders in /gnu/store with the same version and I’m not sure why that is, but I think it’s related to another issue I have.

4

So for users that still use X11, I created some dotfiles like this:

(define-module (config services home layout-european-xkb)
  #:use-module (gnu home services)
  #:use-module (guix gexp)
  #:export (service-user-layout-european-xkb))

;; 1. The script that activates the layout
(define activate-layout-xkb
  (plain-file "activate-layout-xkb.sh"
              "#!/bin/sh
# Activate the European layout only if we're in a graphical session
if [ -n \"$DISPLAY\" ]; then
    setxkbmap -print | sed 's/xkb_symbols.*/xkb_symbols   { include \"pc+yr(aoi)+inet(evdev)\" };/' | xkbcomp -I$HOME/.local/share/xkb - $DISPLAY >> /tmp/activation-desktop-xkb.log 2>&1
fi"))

;; 2. The .desktop file for XFCE autostart
(define activation-desktop-xkb
  (plain-file "activate-layout-european-xkb.desktop"
              "[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Activate European Keyboard
Exec=sh /home/folaht/.local/bin/activate-layout-xkb.sh
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true"))

;; 3. The service that brings everything together
;; Note: adjust the path to your 'yr' file if it's located elsewhere than config/xkb/yr
(define service-user-layout-european-xkb
   ;; Place the XKB file and the script
  (simple-service 'xkb-european-file
                  home-files-service-type
                  `((".local/share/xkb/symbols/yr" ,(local-file "../../files/keyboard/yr" "yr"))
                    (".local/bin/activate-layout-xkb.sh" ,activate-layout-xkb)
                    (".config/autostart/activate-layout-european-xkb.desktop" ,activation-desktop-xkb))))

(define-module (config home-configuration)
...
  #:use-module (config services home layout-european-xkb)
...

(home-environment
  (packages ...)


  (services
   (append (list ... 
                  activate-layout-xkb
                  ...)
           %base-home-services)))

And then ran

$ guix home -L ~/Path/to/dotfiles reconfigure ~/Path/to/dotfiles/config/home-configuration.scm

For Wayland I’ve heard that the solution is a lot easier, but I don’t have Wayland yet, so I’ll wait until I can post a solution for that too.