Extended Polish layout for xkb (”pl_ext”) with some twists ;-).

I dislike idea of having one Alt key used as functional modifier and the other one as typographic one, while Caps is pretty much unused. With regular layout, Polish or not Polish, not only a lot of special characters are not available directly but also regular characters are put in odd places, which is especially true for programmer (two keystrokes to get “+”).

Unfortunately I don’t know how to make this layout as add-on, so this is a replacement. Copy all original files (safety) and then copy over provided ones. The layout itself is proven to help type more comfortable since 2008, these particular files are used with openSUSE Leap 15.3.

Alt keys are symmetric and are mapped as “Meta” — they are repurposed as typographic modifiers. Caps is new “Alt” — functional modifier. For getting “Caps” effect, which is needed very rarely, I found pressing both Shift keys works well and it is easy to remember.

Parentheses and brackets are swapped, same story with back-tick and underscore. Also plus sign and backslash are more intuitive, as well colon and semicolon. All those changes reflect how often one uses those characters when programming.

There are some special symbols put in numeric row and on the right side (over regular typographic symbols) — symbols like “€”, “§” or “≥” are available right away. The character “¶” — Alt + p — makes an exception for easier remembering.

There are added German characters “ß” (Alt + b) and “äöü” — brackets segment.

There is support for Spanish as well, Alt + ` gives “¿” and Alt + 1 gives “¡”. Spanish “ñ” is available thanks to Alt + m, and accented characters “áéyúí” are used with “qwyui”.

One day I make proper images with layouts, one day…