Get German keyboard with English user interface

To get an English UI with German keyboard, I followed the Void wiki and did:

• Become root

  sudo su -
  

• Edit /etc/default/libc-locales, uncomment the wanted locales in the system

  sed -i -e 's/^#de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8/de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8/g' /etc/default/libc-locales
  sed -i -e 's/^#en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8/g' /etc/default/libc-locales
  

  Of course you can use the editor of your choice in doing so.

• Write /etc/locale.conf and set everything to German, except LANG and LC_MESSAGES

  cat << __EOF__ > /etc/locale.conf
  LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_CTYPE="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_NUMERIC="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_TIME="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_COLLATE=C
  LC_MONETARY="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_MESSAGES="en_US.UTF-8"
  LC_PAPER="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_NAME="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_ADDRESS="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_TELEPHONE="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_MEASUREMENT="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_IDENTIFICATION="de_DE.UTF-8"
  LC_ALL=
  __EOF__
  

• Rebuild locales

  xbps-reconfigure -f glibc-locales
  exit
  

Now, there are the Umlauts in qterm, xterm and the "real TTY" aka ALT+F2. This should probably work with other combinations of locales, too.

X11

Project trident uses as display manager and right now it only supports an us keyboard in the login screen.

• To change that to a German keyboard, become root

  sudo su -
  

• Insert a line in one of the sddm startup scripts

  grep --quiet setxkbmap /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup || echo 'setxkbmap de' >> /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
  # validate
  cat /usr/share/sddm/scripts/Xsetup
  #!/bin/sh
  # Xsetup - run as root before the login dialog appears
  setxkbmap de
  

• Reboot the machine.

Now you are greeted with a little German flag and keyboard layout.