Italian layout variant based on US Dvorak layout for Kinesis Advantage

This repository provides a US variant layout for XKB that supports Italians deadkeys (i.e. vowels with diacritics) especially meant for Kinesis Advantage keyboard.

Even if everything in this repository is meant for Kinesis Advantage, I'm sure that you can learn from here everything you need to build, remap and customize your own keyboard layout for Linux.

If you need some help to understand better how all the parts are working, please have a look at my guide on Medium.com

Install

Be aware that this repository has two branches:

• master
• hack

hack is the branch you might be interested in and contains the modified files. master contains the original files, you know, in case of need and for comparison.

git clone git@github.com:damko/xkb_kinesis_advantage_dvorak_layout.git
cd xkb_kinesis_advantage_dvorak_layout
git checkout hack
sudo cp -fR * /usr/share/X11/xkb/

These commands will apply the changes:

setxkbmap -model kinesis -layout us -variant kinesis_adv_dvorak_it -option
setxkbmap -model kinesis -layout us -variant kinesis_adv_dvorak_it -option -option "lv3:rwin_switch"

You will end up with a standard American Dvorak layout with all the additional vowels with diacritics required for the Italian language.

About vowels with diacritics

To type à hold the SUPER_R (the key with the windows flag on the right thumb-block of your Kinesis) and hit a

To type À hold the SUPER_R + SHIFT (any) and hit a

Of course the same goes for each key having more hosting more than 2 characters (3rd level characters) like 1, 4, 5 etc.

Multiple layouts

If you want to load an additional layout, let's say the Russian one providing Cyrillic, run these commands

setxkbmap -model kinesis -layout us,us -variant kinesis_adv_dvorak_it,rus -option
setxkbmap -model kinesis -layout us,us -variant kinesis_adv_dvorak_it,rus -option "lv3:rwin_switch,grp:alt_space_toggle"

You can switch between the Italian or the Russian layout by hitting ALT+SPACE

If you want to load the US layout and the Italian variant run these commands:

setxkbmap -model kinesis -layout us,us -variant ,kinesis_adv_dvorak_it -option
setxkbmap -model kinesis -layout us,us -variant ,kinesis_adv_dvorak_it -option "lv3:rwin_switch,grp:alt_space_toggle"

Test and run

Run

setxkbmap -print -verbose 10

to check that all the parameters where loaded correctly by XKB.

You should see something like this (depending on what you have set in the setxkbmap command):

Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/evdev...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev...
Success.
Applied rules from evdev:
rules:      evdev
model:      kinesis
layout:     us,us
variant:    kinesis_adv_dvorak_it,rus
options:    caps:none,shift:both_capslock,lv3:rwin_switch,grp:alt_space_toggle
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes:   evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types:      complete
compat:     complete
symbols:    pc+us(kinesis_adv_dvorak_it)+us(rus):2+inet(evdev)+group(alt_space_toggle)+level3(rwin_switch)+capslock(none)+shift(both_capslock)
geometry:   kinesis(model100)
xkb_keymap {
    xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)" };
    xkb_types     { include "complete"  };
    xkb_compat    { include "complete"  };
    xkb_symbols   { include "pc+us(kinesis_adv_dvorak_it)+us(rus):2+inet(evdev)+group(alt_space_toggle)+level3(rwin_switch)+capslock(none)+shift(both_capslock)"    };
    xkb_geometry  { include "kinesis(model100)" };
};

Test your layout by typing some text and, if everything is working as expected, make the modifications permanent by editing the /etc/default/keyboard in this way:

XKBMODEL="kinesis"
XKBLAYOUT="us,us"
XKBVARIANT="kinesis_adv_dvorak_it,rus"
XKBOPTIONS="lv3:rwin_switch,grp:alt_space_toggle"

Reboot your machine, run again setxkbmap -print -verbose 10 and test again by typing some text. Everything should work as expected.

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