XKB Layout Painter

Discontinued: This old version is no longer maintained. The new version has moved to https://xkbedit.github.io/.

A visual, web-based tool for designing custom XKB (X Keyboard Extension) key symbol layouts for Linux.

Instead of manually editing complex text files and looking up keysym names, simply click a key on the virtual keyboard and type the character you want it to produce.

Features

• Visual Interface: See your layout mapped physically as you edit.
• 4-Level Support: Edit all four standard XKB levels:
  1. Normal (Base)
  2. Shift
  3. AltGr (Level 3)
  4. Shift + AltGr (Level 4)
• Smart Defaults: Pre-filled with US QWERTY defaults, so you only need to define the keys you want to change.
• Automatic Keysyms: Automatically converts characters to XKB keysym names (e.g., a → a) or Unicode hex codes (e.g., ə → U0259) if no name exists.
• Instant Export: Generates a copy-paste ready xkb_symbols block.

Development

This project uses React and Browserify. It does not require a heavy build step or complex configuration.

Prerequisites

• Node.js (v18 or later recommended)

Installation

1. Clone the repository.
2. Install dependencies:

   npm install

Running Locally

To start the development watcher (which rebuilds the bundle on file changes):

npm run dev

Then open public/index.html in your web browser.

To build for production (minified):

npm run build