X Keyboard Configuration Database
The non-arch keyboard configuration database for X Window. The goal is to provide the consistent, well-structured, frequently released open source of X keyboard configuration data for X Window System implementations (free, open source and commercial). The project is targeted to XKB-based systems.
What is it for?
There are many X Window implementations which have very poor support for non-standard keyboards, national layouts and options.
Open Source X Window System implementations (xfree86, x.org) currently have non-synchronized XKB configuration databases: the bugs fixed in one repository are not reflected in the other, new configuration elements are added (in best case) separately and independently to both CVS trees - but usually only one tree gets them. Also, these implementations contain unbalanced and unstructured layout trees (very often one country/language have several layouts, each with its own set of variants).
Commercial X Window System implementations cannot support large variety of national layouts - usually, because of lack of resources. So users from "exotic" countries feel offended and frustrated - their environments are not complete.
The solution which would guarantee quality support for the keyboard configuration data is to have single repository which would serve as meta-project for X servers and OS distributions. X Keyboard Configuration Database is trying to be the one.
License
Development
For details on mailing lists, bug reporting, code repositories, and submission rules, see here
Releases
0.1 - 25 May 2004, first version. Only single-group layouts are included (tested for compatibility with the multiple layouts feature). Each language/country has no more than one layout and any number of variants.
0.2 - 12 Jun 2004, second version. HOWTO.transition is added, xkbcomp symlink is supported, Maori layout is added, small fix for Brasilian layout is applied.
0.3 - 23 Jul 2004, HEAVILY restructured layout names, compatibility rules are introduced, intltool problem resolved (sorry, with warnings).
0.4 - 28 Sep 2004, A lot of fixes. More univeral EURO handling. New urdu layout. Improved handling for indicators.
0.5 - 02 Mar 2005, New layouts/models/options. Updated translations. Group names synchronization.
0.6 - August 2005, Many improvements.
0.7 - December 2005, New layouts/models/options. Reogranized symbols/inet.
0.8 - March 2006, New layouts, fixes.
0.9 - October 2006, New layouts, fixes.
1.0 - July 2007, Around 70 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed.
1.1 - September 2007, Around 30 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. First time-based release.
1.2 - January 2008, Around 40 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Updated translation schema.
1.3 - May 2008, Around 40 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Dropped old rulesets sgi and sun. Added a lot of metadata, related to countries and languages.
1.4 - September 2008, Around 30 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Added new ruleset evdev.
1.5 - January 2009, More than 40 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. symbols/inet restructured.
1.6 - May 2009, Around 30 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Added terminate:* group. Dropped locale-specific models.
1.7 - September 2009, Around 30 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Restructured rules-generating scripts.
1.8 - January 2010, Around 10 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed.
1.9 - May 2010, Around 30 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Evdev model dropped.
2.0 - September 2010, 17 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed.
2.1 - January 2011, 13 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed.
2.2 - April 2011, New structure of descriptions, massive changes in user-visible strings. Special release for GNOME 3
2.3 - May 2011, 18 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed. Descriptions from 2.2 are polished
2.4 - September 2011, 9 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed.
Contributions to the project. Relations to X Window System implementations.
We kindly ask and encourage people contributing layouts to XFree86 and X.Org repositories to send patches to X Keyboard Configuration Database. We would highly appreciate X implementations using our codebase in their distributions (there was preliminary agreement with X.Org implementation maintainers).
Links
X Keyboard Extension (by Ivan U. Pascal)
The XKB Configuration Guide (by Kamil Toman, Ivan U. Pascal, XFree86 project)
An Unreliable Guide to XKB Configuration (by Doug Palmer)
Dreaming of XKB2
For many years, there are rumours, discussions and speculations about XKB2 - the new improved version of XKB. I collected some ideas that might one day be implemented within XKB2
Maintainers
- Ivan U. Pascal (comaintainer)
-- Main.SergeyUdaltsov - 04 Apr 2011