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.

Clone this repository to your Awesome WM configuration directory:

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

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

   local keyboard_layout = require("keyboard_layout")
   

2. Create instance of keyboard widget. 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,
           -- ...
       },
   }
   

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.

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.

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

Egor Churaev [email protected]

MIT

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