Knowledge Base (Posts about keyboard)

Gxkb is replacing fbxkb in my workflows, and GTK2 status in Devuan

bgstack15 — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 14:08:00 GMT

The story

I use a patched Fluxbox as my window manager. I use fbxkb as a system tray icon to show me quickly which keyboard layout is active in X11.

I was reading on Ludditus about how Debian is working even harder to remove gtk2 more. I remember when some of the gtk2 dev packages were first removed from Debian, because I had to switch to using gtk3 to build Palemoon web browser and FreeFileSync. But this recent conversation from Ludditus was the first I'd heard of this recent change, which was a week after the original announcement by a guy to the debian-devel mailing list who is not even subscribed to the mailing list. I seem to recall that most mailing lists are set up so you must subscribe in order to send to it. I wonder if this user who started the conversation was abusing permissions or taking advantage of a bad configuration. There's a whole thread you could read for more info on the thunderous applause leading to the death of liberty.

Anyway, trying to get back to the topic at hand, I discovered that my workflows still dependent on the "offensive" package include the following.

$ sudo apt-get remove libgtk2.0-0t64 libgtk2.0-0
The following packages will be REMOVED:
asunder fbxkb gtk-chtheme libgail-common libgail18t64 libgtk2.0-0t64 libgtk2.0-bin libgtkspell0 palemoon pidgin
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 10 to remove and 265 not upgraded.

I have yet to address pidgin, which I actively use. I have found GTK3 forks for asunder: GrimRipper and asunder-gtk3. I have yet to address Palemoon, but I think that one already was using gtk3 also, so I hope it was just an optional dependency on gtk2. I haven't used it in a while; I'll have to grab Steven Pusser's latest palemoon work.

Gxkb and Fbxkb

Gxkb is already very similar to fbxkb, but it already uses gtk3. I started testing it, and had to poke around for quite a while before I realized the solution for my needs is very simple! All I need to do is set up my {country_code}_{variant}.png in the correct directory.

mkdir -p ~/.local/share/gxkb/flags
cp -pi /mnt/public/Support/Programs/gxkb/us_dvorak.png ~/.local/share/gxkb/flags/

That's it. I used ImageMagick (or whatever has supplanted it, et al) convert to invert the colors so Dvorak shows up as an inverted-color US flag. That is all.

I had forked fbxkb to add some features, but I need zero customization of gxkb! This simplifies my maintenance efforts, not that I had to rebuild fbxkb ever once I built it the way I liked. Here are the customizations I had added to fbxkb, and the current resolution for gxkb:

Display menu on left click, and increment input method on middle click: Can live without the menu; I have only 2 variants for now. If that changes, I might have to implement a menu.
Enable rotating input methods on scrollwheel scrolling action: Already have this feature.
Add variant support, e.g., dvorak: Already have this feature.
Add tooltip: Already have this feature!

References and additional reading

Weblinks

There might be additional or repeated entries in-line in the post.

Files

file:///mnt/public/Support/Programs/gxkb/gxkb-keyboard-layout-indicator.md

LibreOffice Customize Keyboard does work, but...

bgstack15 — Mon, 27 Jan 2025 13:56:00 GMT

When you go to customize keyboard shortcuts so that there's some keystroke for increasing and decreasing font size, you will discover something. And upon taking screenshots for writing this post, everything makes sense now!

screenshot, too big

Screenshot of a cell with a value too large for the width

You will find the Menu Tools... -> Customize... -> dialog tab Menus and learn the name of the operation that should happen.

Fluxbox handle capslock media keys

bgstack15 — Sat, 06 Jan 2024 13:40:25 GMT

VLC lets you configure global hotkeys, so you can map your XF86AudioPrev and related keys. However, when my Capslock is on, my keyboard sends different keycodes. Here's my fix for that.

I wrote a shell script to handle the logic.

files/2024/listings/vlc-command (Source)

#!/bin/sh
# Startdate: 2024-01-01-2 14:36
# Purpose: to be a hotkey target for when CapsLock is on but I still press "Play/Pause" media button on the keyboard.
# Usage:
#    In ~/.fluxbox/keys:
#    # For capslock, media previous, pause, skip
#    171 :Exec bin/vlc-command skip
#    172 :Exec bin/vlc-command play-pause
#    173 :Exec bin/vlc-command previous

case "${1}" in
   "play-pause")
      dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.PlayPause
      ;;
   "previous"|"back"|"left")
      dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Previous
      ;;
   "next"|"skip"|"right")
      dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.vlc /org/mpris/MediaPlayer2 org.mpris.MediaPlayer2.Player.Next
      ;;
esac

And then in my ~/.fluxbox/keys file I added these statements:

# For capslock, media previous, pause, skip
171 :Exec bin/vlc-command skip
172 :Exec bin/vlc-command play-pause
173 :Exec bin/vlc-command previous

I derived these of course with xev(1).

Errata

And the reason I sometimes end up with capslock on is I always use capslock to help wake on a monitor. I thought it was an XKCD comic that pointed out that Windows admins would use Ctrl+Alt+Delete to wake up a system, and that by default that reboots a Linux system, so when I have switched over to using all-Linux years ago, I use other methods (Capslock) to see if a system is awake/locked.

X11 switching keyboard layouts

bgstack15 — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 13:01:40 GMT

tl;dr

For myself:

sudo apt-get install fbxkb
setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:shifts_toggle 'us,us(dvorak)'

Add to ~/.fluxbox/startup:

fbxkb &

The story

I learned that Xorg (if not all X11 implementations) provide input method switching built-in! You can change keyboard layouts with:

setxkbmap -layout us -variant basic

To switch to dvorak:

setxkbmap -layout us -variant dvorak

While researching in preparation for writing a tray icon utility to show/switch input methods, I learned that you can simply specify multiple input methods, and complex options such as switching between the two:

setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:shifts_toggle,grp_led:scroll 'us(basic),us(dvorak)'

See xkeyboard-config(7) for a list of options.

And in my research, I also learned that I don't need to write my own mktrayicon-powered one: Multiple already exist!

xxkb (sourceforge) (less-dead github fork). You know an open-source project is old and probably abandoned if it's on sourceforge. It was cool before it went sour. (And it was cool before github was cool and has fallen now too.)
gxkb (origin?) (github)
ibus (github
fbxkb (sourceforge) (in Debian sid)

Fbxkb was the closest to what I wanted visually, functionally, and source code-wise. Multiple sources of fbxkb source code exist, such as a few github places, the sourceforge (abandoned) upstream in svn which I don't use, and the Debian source tarball.

I did fork it to add some small steps I wanted:

Display menu on left click, and increment input method on middle click
Enable rotating input methods on scrollwheel scrolling action
Add variant support, e.g., dvorak
Add tooltip

Research links

Keyboard LEDs trayicons in C

bgstack15 — Sun, 16 Oct 2022 13:01:19 GMT

I previously wrote a small tool for myself named keyboard-leds-trayicons, which wraps around mktrayicon to provide system tray icons that indicate the current status of Capslock and Numlock.

Well, I decided to learn some C programming and rewrite my cruddy shell scripts with their silly extra sleep 0.75 invocations. I incorporated the entirety of mktrayicon.c, and wrote new logic.

I started piecemeal: at first just adding basic fifo controls to the child processes. Then I got fancy and added Unix domain sockets. This has been a labor of love, and now it is ready to be shared. You can see the almost-product-worthy keyboard-leds-trayicons.c now. I enjoyed adding getopt and libinih support. C is such a good way to write small programs like this. I even learned how to use libxdo (which powers xdotool) so you can click the tray icons to toggle Capslock and Numlock!

Add custom udev hardware definition for extra keys on keyboard

bgstack15 — Tue, 08 Jun 2021 12:33:44 GMT

My old HP keyboard has an extra row of buttons, with icons like "camera" and "music" and "shopping cart." On my exact keyboard, only the globe, magnifying glass, and envelope buttons register. Well, I finally decided to do something about it, and of course the Arch wiki has some great info. The process is more important than the output, because everybody's hardware is different.

# File: /etc/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard-hp5183.hwdb
# Locations:
#    /mnt/public/Support/Systems/hp-5183-keyboard/60-keyboard-hp5183.hwdb
# Author: bgstack15
# Startdate: 2021-06-04
# Title: Udev definition for extra keys on HP 5183 keyboard
# Purpose: Allow use of the extra keys on the keyboard
# Usage:
#    Place this file in /etc/udev/hwdb.d/
#    modify /usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-hwdb-update.service by commenting out ConditionNeedsUpdate=/etc
#    sudo systemctl daemon-reload (only after that first modification to that service file)
#    sudo systemd-hwdb update
#    sudo udevadm trigger
#    Validate with: udevadm info /dev/input/by-path/platform-i8042-serio-0-event-kbd | grep KEYBOARD_KEY
# Reference:
#    evemu(1) provides the name of the device, which you prepend with "evdev:atkbd:" and trim some stuff off at the en
d.
#    /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb
#    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Map_scancodes_to_keycodes
#    https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboard_input
#    just visit the CTRL+ALT+F2 console and press the keys that are not mappable/registered for xev.
#    /usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h provides the basis for key names
#    example files at /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb are best
evdev:atkbd:dmi:bvnHewlett-Packard:bvrK01v02.05:bd05/07/2012:br2.5:svnHewlett-Packard:pnHPCompaqElite8300SFF:pvr*
 KEYBOARD_KEY_9f=camera          # camera
 KEYBOARD_KEY_96=media           # music
 KEYBOARD_KEY_b9=switchvideomode # camcorder
 KEYBOARD_KEY_94=prog1           # "hp"
# b4 already defined: globe
 KEYBOARD_KEY_a6=help            # question mark
# e1 already defined: magnifying glass
 KEYBOARD_KEY_9e=shop            # shopping cart
# a3 already defined: mail

References

Weblinks

Local files

/usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb
/usr/include/linux/input-event-codes.h provides the basis for key names
/usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb has the best examples

Package for devuan: keyboard-leds-trayicons

bgstack15 — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 13:33:56 GMT

I recently purchased a ThinkPad P50s and I love it! However, it doesn't have indicators for capslock and numlock. So I wrote a tool to simulate them! Keyboard-leds-trayicons is my solution. You can go install it in Devuan Ceres from my OBS. Reading the status of capslock and numlock is trivial on the command line:

xset q | awk 'function d2b(d,b) {while(d) {b=d%2b;d=int(d/2)}return(b)} /LED/{print d2b($NF)}'

The awk is there to convert the provided decimal value into a binary. But how do you poll this, and display it in your X11 session in an unobtrusive way? With a POSIX shell script, of course! But what about the actual icons? Use my fork of mktrayicon. My fork adds a few patches, and you can also get it at the OBS link above. Obviously most people have no need for this package. And by now anyone without the indicators probably doesn't need them. This project was 99% for myself, but I like to share. The default icons are a bit boring, which fits my style. But the tool uses the xdg icon spec, so you can add your own icons for capslock-on and similar. Patches are welcome to the project, so if you really think this package should include more icons, or use yours by default, please open a merge request!

A few useful keybindings for Window Manager in Xfce

bgstack15 — Mon, 18 Jun 2018 13:29:47 GMT

xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Down             tile_down_left_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Left             tile_up_left_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Right            tile_down_right_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Up               tile_up_right_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Down                  tile_down_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Left                  tile_left_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Right                 tile_right_key
xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts /xfwm4/custom/Up                    tile_up_key

I found that by having these values, I can use the keyboard to control the window placement with almost identical functionality as Cinnamon. This was one of the key differences (no pun intended) for me between Xfce and Cinnamon. To import these settings with that input as is, check out xfconf.sh. I describe it here on the blog at xfconf-query save and load from file

KDE always show keyboard underscores

bgstack15 — Mon, 01 May 2017 12:54:05 GMT

Overview

I like to use the keyboard to interact with my computer, even in the gui. On my KDE system, I wanted my accelerator keys to always be visible. I had to poke around the World Wide Web for a while to find out exactly how to do that. These instructions are valid for kdelibs 6:4.14.30-1.fc25.

KDE always show accelerator keys

Open up "System Settings" application.
Select "Application Style."
Select "Widget Style" tab.
Select "Configure..." button beside Widget style.
Adjust "Keyboard accelerators visibility" to "Always show keyboard"

References

Weblinks

Instructions for an older version of kde https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1384425