The xxkb program is a keyboard layout switcher and indicator. Unlike the
programs that reload keyboard maps and use their own hot-keys, xxkb is a
simple GUI for XKB (X KeyBoard extension) and just sends commands to and
accepts events from XKB. That means that it will work with the existing
setup of your X Server without any modifications.

Additional features are:

* xxkb remembers the current layout in each application and switches to
it on the focus change
  
* xxkb can put it's own icon on an application window titlebar, such an
icon is a 'local' layout switcher and indicator for that application
  
* if a complete keymap has more than two layouts, xxkb allows to
designate two of them as main and alternative ones and switch between
them only.
  
* The alternative layout can be set separately for each application and
can be changed on a run-time.
  
* xxkb supports lists of applications for which some special actions are
necessary: ignoring window(for those for which preserving of the current
layout is undesired), setting the current and alternative layouts on the
application startup.

* xxkb can be docked as a docklet in the WindowMaker and can be placed in
the Notification area(systray) of the Gnome, KDE and some other FreeDesktop
standards compatible window managers.

Build and Install
----------------

In the xxkb source directory run:

xmkmf
make
make install

(for the last one you probably need root privileges)

Configure and run-time operation
-------------------------------

Read man xxkb.

The official site of xxkb is http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/xxkb/