Instructions on how to bind CapsLock+Key to various wiedly used actions like arrow keys, home, end, etc. For xkb on Linux.
Bindings used here are:
CapsLock + ...
i= Upj= Leftk= Downl= Rightu= Homeo= End,= Backspace.= Deletep= Menu[= PageDown]= PageUp
But they can rebound in symbols/custom_caps.
WARNING: Setting something incorrectly in the xkb config files can make X fail at startup, locking you out of the ability to log in. Make sure you know how to recover in that case.
All default config files are located in /usr/share/X11/xkb/. Custom configs have to be placed there as well.
compat/custom_caps disables normal CapsLock behaviour and, enables it to only send the "Lock" modifier when held.
types/custom_caps maps the "Lock" and "Lock+Shift" modifier to Level3 input (where, for example, Level1 and Level2 are lowercase and uppercase letters on your keyboard respectively)
symbols/custom_caps adds actions for certain keys at
Level3 input. For example, the 'i' letter at Level3 sends the Up keycode, and ',' sends the Backspace keycode.
git clone https://github.com/automaticp/xkb-custom-caps-keybindings
cd xkb-custom-caps-keybindings
./make_backup.sh
sudo ./copy_files.sh
Replace all lines mentioning CapsLock in /usr/share/X11/xkb/compat/complete with
augment "custom_caps"
Open /usr/share/X11/xkb/types/complete and add to the end of the list:
include "custom_caps"
Choose a file in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ that corresponds to your keyboard layout and add to the end of the base layout the following:
include "custom_caps"
Add in your X/Window Manager startup file the following:
xset r 30 # u
xset r 31 # i
xset r 32 # o
xset r 33 # p
xset r 34 # [
xset r 35 # ]
xset r 44 # j
xset r 45 # k
xset r 46 # l
xset r 59 # ,
xset r 60 # .
Log out, log back in. Done.
Full instructions below.
From project root:
./make_backup.sh [optional_path_to_place_backup]
This will create backups of the contents of compat/, types/ and symbols/ from /usr/share/X11/xkb/ in the currend directory, or one specified as an argument.
./copy_files.sh
or
./symlink_files.sh
Open /usr/share/X11/xkb/compat/complete in any text editor.
Replace all lines mentioning CapsLock with
augment "custom_caps"
For example, if the original complete looks like
default xkb_compatibility "complete" {
include "basic"
augment "iso9995"
...
augment "level5"
augment "caps(caps_lock)"
};
After replacement it should look like this
default xkb_compatibility "complete" {
include "basic"
augment "iso9995"
...
augment "level5"
augment "custom_caps"
};
Open /usr/share/X11/xkb/types/complete and add
include "custom_caps"
to the end of the list. The result should look like this
default xkb_types "complete" {
include "basic"
include "mousekeys"
...
include "numpad"
include "custom_caps"
};
Choose a file in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ that corresponds to your keyboard layout. For example, symbols/us is a symbol table defining variants of the English (US) layout. You can find the list of all layout variants in /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst
We'll be extending the us layout with our custom keybinds. Opening symbols/us we first see a "basic" us layout. Every layout following the "basic" is its variant and "inherits" from it by include'ing it's contents.
default partial alphanumeric_keys modifier_keys
xkb_symbols "basic" {
name[Group1]= "English (US)";
key <TLDE> { [ grave, asciitilde ] };
key <AE01> { [ 1, exclam ] };
key <AE02> { [ 2, at ] };
...
key <AD01> { [ q, Q ] };
key <AD02> { [ w, W ] };
key <AD03> { [ e, E ] };
key <AD04> { [ r, R ] };
key <AD05> { [ t, T ] };
key <AD06> { [ y, Y ] };
...
key <BKSL> { [ backslash, bar ] };
};
What we'll do is is we'll include our custom layout at the end of "basic"; this will automatically affect all the variants of the English (US) layout.
The result should look like this:
default partial alphanumeric_keys modifier_keys
xkb_symbols "basic" {
name[Group1]= "English (US)";
key <TLDE> { [ grave, asciitilde ] };
...
key <BKSL> { [ backslash, bar ] };
include "custom_caps"
};
For other layouts the "base" layout can have a different name and be a bit harder to find. The layout that acts as a common base is usually:
- Placed close to the beginning of a symbols file
- Defines all alphanumeric keys (A-Z, 0-9) and some more
- Is included by most of the other layouts in that file
If you'll try to restart X right now, you might notice that the keybinds work, but when held they don't produce repeat keystrokes. This is an issue with using RedirectKey() in our symbols/custom_caps. The xkb disables repeat keystrokes whenever the key action is not a simple rebinding.
We specifically want to use RedirectKey(), because it produces an actual keycode and not some virtual key. A lot of software have difficulty understanding virtual keycodes, so it's best to avoid simple rebinding.
Sadly, I have not found a way to re-enable repeats right inside the symbols/... file, but there's a workaround, of course. You can re-enable them by adding in your X/Window Manager startup file the following:
# set repeat for keys that were overriden in the custom xkb config
# xset r [keycode]
xset r 30 # u
xset r 31 # i
xset r 32 # o
xset r 33 # p
xset r 34 # [
xset r 35 # ]
xset r 44 # j
xset r 45 # k
xset r 46 # l
xset r 59 # ,
xset r 60 # .
I'm running Gnome, so I've just added this to ~/.gnomerc.
Keycodes for other keys can be found by running:
xev
The real reason I'am writing these instructions is that a recent system update wiped all of my custom keybindings, that I, about half a year ago, had haphazardly put together out of scraps of information that I could find on xkb. It cost me a week of pain to actually get a somewhat stable version done. And then it was gone... And of course by that time I barely remembered anything.
This time I did it better, and tried to almost not touch default config files. The gist is that some system updates are likely to reset these files, like types/complete and symbols/us. So upon an update, if everything breaks, redo step 2.