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

MIT 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.
2.5 - January 2012, 15 bugs from freedesktop.org bugzilla were fixed.
2.5.1 - January 2012, translations updated (after urgent release 2.5)
2.6 - May 2012, translations, minor fixes
2.7 - Sep 2012, translations, minor fixes. *.dir files are gone. CTL+ALT type fixed
2.8 - Jan 2013, translations, minor fixes, massive updates from Oracle
2.9 - May 2013, translations, minor fixes
2.10.1 - Oct 2013, translations, minor fixes, massive code cleanup
2.11 - Jan 2014, translations, minor fixes, more code cleanup
2.12 - May 2014
2.13 - Sep 2014
2.14 - Jan 2015
2.15 - May 2015
2.16 - Sep 2015
2.17 - Jan 2016
2.18 - May 2016
2.19 - Sep 2016
2.20 - Jan 2017
2.21 - May 2017
2.22 - Sep 2017
2.23 - Jan 2018
2.24 - Jun 2018
2.25 - Sep 2018
2.26 - Jan 2019
2.27 - Jun 2019
2.28 - Sep 2019
2.29 - Jan 2020
2.30 - Jun 2020
2.31 - Sep 2020
2.32 - Jan 2021
2.33 - Jun 2021
2.34 - Sep 2021
2.35 - Jan 2022, switching to xz format, dropping autotools
2.36 - Jun 2022
2.37 - Sep 2022
2.38 - Jan 2023
2.39 - Jun 2023
2.40 - Sep 2023

Release Schedule

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).

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

?Sergey V. Udaltsov
Ivan U. Pascal (comaintainer)