Keyboard switcher for Awesome WM with additional layouts

Intro

Usually I use two keyboard layouts on my computer there are English and Russian layouts. But sometimes I need to write something on another language, for example: German. But adding new keyboard layout was very annoying me. Because I have to press more than one time for changing my keyboard layout from Russian to English. But with this widget I can configure additional layouts. When I press on buttons on keyboard only my primary layouts will be switching. But when I want to use additional layout, I just click right mouse button on keyboard widget and select one of additional layouts. You can see how it is work in the Screenshot section.

Table of Contents

• Features
• Installing
• Usage
  • Options
  • Functions
  • How to use a different layout switch command
  • TUI wrap configuration
• Screenshots
• References
  • Author
  • Licence
  • Flags icons

Features

• Conception of additional layouts
• Flexible configuration of the widget
• GUI/TUI modes of display current layout.
• Possibility of remembering layout per window.

Installing

Clone this repository to your Awesome WM configuration directory:

cd ~/.config/awesome
git clone https://github.com/echuraev/keyboard_layout

Usage

1. Add call of keyboard_layout module to your rc.init:

   local keyboard_layout = require("keyboard_layout")

2. Create instance of keyboard widget (full information about options that are supported, you can find in section: options). You can choose between text and graphical layout label, see below. Primary and Additional layouts can be set by add_primary_layout and add_additional_layout respectively. And when you add all necessary options to kbdcfg then you have to call bind functions. In this call all your settings will apply.

   2.1. Create text label:

   local kbdcfg = keyboard_layout.kbdcfg({type = "tui"})
   
   kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("English", "US", "us")
   kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("Русский", "RU", "ru")
   
   kbdcfg.add_additional_layout("Deutsch",  "DE", "de")
   kbdcfg.add_additional_layout("Français", "FR", "fr")
   kbdcfg.bind()

   2.2. Create graphical label:

   local kbdcfg = keyboard_layout.kbdcfg({type = "gui"})
   
   kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("English", beautiful.en_layout, "us")
   kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("Русский", beautiful.ru_layout, "ru")
   
   kbdcfg.add_additional_layout("Deutsch",  beautiful.de_layout, "de")
   kbdcfg.add_additional_layout("Français", beautiful.fr_layout, "fr")
   kbdcfg.bind()

3. Bind your mouse keys:

   -- Mouse bindings
   kbdcfg.widget:buttons(
   awful.util.table.join(awful.button({ }, 1, function () kbdcfg.switch_next() end),
                         awful.button({ }, 3, function () kbdcfg.menu:toggle() end))
   )

4. Bind your keyboard shortcuts:

   globalkeys = awful.util.table.join(globalkeys,
      -- Shift-Alt to change keyboard layout
      awful.key({"Shift"}, "Alt_L", function () kbdcfg.switch_next() end),
      -- Alt-Shift to change keyboard layout
      awful.key({"Mod1"}, "Shift_L", function () kbdcfg.switch_next() end)
   )

5. Add widget to your wibar:

   s.mywibox = awful.wibar({ position = "top", screen = s })
   
   -- Add widgets to the wibox
   s.mywibox:setup {
      layout = wibox.layout.align.horizontal,
      { -- Left widgets
          -- ...
      },
      { -- Middle widgets
          -- ...
      },
      { -- Right widgets
          -- ...
          kbdcfg.widget,
          -- ...
      },
   }

Options

The following options you can pass to create function:

• type - set type of widget. It is two types of widget gui or tui. Default: tui
• cmd - command to change layout. For more information see section: How to use a different layout switch command. Default: setxkbmap
• default_layout_index - set index of default layout. Default: 1
• remember_layout - to remember selected layout per window set it to true. Default: false
• tui_wrap_left, tui_wrap_right - allows you to customise the wrapping around the tui version of the widget. Default: " "

Functions

• switch_next() - this function switches one primary keyboard layout to the next primary layout.
• bind() - this function applies all settings to the widget.
• switch_by_name(name) - this function is mostly used for setting additional layouts. It gets a layout name (first parameter of add_xxxx_layout() of layout that should be set.
• add_primary_layout(name, label, subcmd) - this function adds a primary layout to the widget.
• add_additional_layout(name, label, subcmd) - this function adds additional layout to the widget.

How to use a different layout switch command

By default the widget uses setxkbmap command to switch keyboard layouts. The following parameters allow it to use a non-standard layout switcher, for example the Fcitx for Chinese/Japanese/Korean input:

local kbdcfg = keyboard_layout.kbdcfg({cmd = "fcitx-remote -s", type = "tui"})

kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("English",  "us", "fcitx-keyboard-us")
kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("Russian",  "ru", "fcitx-keyboard-ru-ruu")
kbdcfg.add_primary_layout("Japanese", "ja", "mozc")

Note, that you should pass a valid input method name to fcitx-remote command. The last layout in the example uses the Mozc as an input method for Japanese input.

TUI wrap configuration

By default, the tui version adds a " " wrapping around the widget as a margin. In certain cases however, this might not be what you want. To change the wrapping around the widget, modify your config as such:

local kbdcfg = keyboard_layout.kbdcfg({
    type = "tui",
    tui_wrap_right = "",  -- wrapping on the right
    tui_wrap_left = " "  -- wrapping on the left
})

The example given should result in something kinda like this:

Screenshots

In the beginning of both screen casts I changed layouts by keyboard shortcats and only primary layouts were switched. After that I showed how additional layouts work.

Usage of gui_layout:

Usage of tui_layout

References

Author

Egor Churaev egor.churaev@gmail.com

Licence

MIT

Flags icons

Icon with British flag I take from here: https://www.gosquared.com/resources/flag-icons/