xkblayout-state is a small command-line program to get/set the current XKB keyboard layout.

It's a thin wrapper around a slightly version of Jay Bromley's XKeyboard class, the original of which is included in http://members.dslextreme.com/users/jbromley/files/ruby-xkb.tar.bz2.

• Make sure x11 development libraries are installed (eg. apt install libx11-dev on Ubuntu)
• To compile just say: make
• To install copy the resulting executable xkblayout-state somewhere in your path

Alternatively with docker: docker build .

xkblayout-state can be used to either print keyboard layout information on stdout or set the currently active layout.

The command to print keyboard layout information is

xkblayout-state print format

format is printed to stdout with the following substitutions (to include a literal % use %%):

• %c -> The number of the currently active layout
• %n -> The name of the currently active layout
• %s -> The symbol of the currently active layout
• %v -> The variant of the currently active layout (this is empty if no variant is specified)
• %e -> The variant of the currently active layout (this is the same as %s if no variant is specified)
• %C -> The number of defined layouts
• %N -> A list containing the names of the layouts (one per line)
• %S -> A list containing the symbols of the layouts (one per line)
• %V -> A list containing the variants of the layouts (one per line; an empty line if no variant is specified for the respective layout)
• %E -> A list containing the variants of the layouts (one per line; if no variant is specified for the respective symbol, the layout symbol is used)

The command to set the currently active keyboard layout is

xkblayout-state set [+-]number

number is the number of the layout to activate. It corresponds to the layouts in the order they appear in, for example, xkblayout-state print %N, starting from zero. If number begins with a plus or minus sign, the number'th layout counting from the currently active layout down or up the list is activated. It wraps around if the list is exceeded.

xkblayout-state is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

xkblayout-state is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. http://www.gnu.org/licenses/