xkb issue - types not recognized

[cheater00 .]

On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 2:29 PM, Jerome Leclanche <adys.wh at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 1:26 PM, cheater00 . <cheater00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi Jerome,
>>
>> On Mon, May 19, 2014 at 1:23 PM, Jerome Leclanche <adys.wh at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> I think an x11-related list might get you some better answers. However
>>> as it happens I made my own xkb layout a while ago. The bad news is I
>>> never quite figured out how to install it as a separate layout, so
>>> what I do is actually replace symbols/us with my layout.
>>
>> thanks, I'll post this to xorg and separately xorg-devel. I'm not sure
>> which one applies.
>>
>>> I don't think you're supposed to edit anything in X11/xkb/rules
>>
>> From what I've read on the internet, some documents recommend adding
>> an xkb_keymap declaration in keymap/. Those files, if you look at
>> them, explicitly specify the types (or compats, not sure) that are
>> being used, so should work. Compiling by hand with xkbcomp should
>> work, but I don't want to do that, I want the OS to ingest the files
>> itself, and show them in the Gnome Keyboard Properties (actually I use
>> MATE, but that's exactly the same).
>>
>> Then some documents say that was obsoleted by (non-xml) files in
>> rules/, e.g. rules/evdev and rules/evdev.lst, and then some say that
>> was obsoleted by xml files in rules/. You can see xkbcomp still
>> operates with xkb_keymap as the internal format. I assume this should
>> now be generated from the xml files somehow. This is what Gnome uses
>> as I understand.
>>
>>> the package manager ships all the files in there and nothing would survive
>>> an xkb-common upgrade. To add insult to injury, xkb does not look in
>>> $XDG_*_HOME dirs so you cannot install your keyboard layout locally.
>>
>> I have advice to the contrary: I've been using the layout this way -
>> having edited evdev.xml - for years now and it's worked through all
>> the package updates I got; not sure if anything updated xkb at all,
>> probably not. It also survived an upgrade from Ubuntu 12.04 to 13.04.
>> And even if it hadn't - I can always just type sudo ./install.py and
>> that's it!
>
> When you say "using the layout this way", what do you mean? I was
> talking about editing files in ~/.local/share.


The way it's done in my package - check it out, especially
installer.py, it should be self-explanatory. It copies some files to
/usr/share and edits evdev.xml. You should be able to use it for your
layout with only minor modifications :-)

Cheers!