Whitestone Keyboard Layout (wσ)

One day I stumbled upon this blog post by Morris Frank. It made me realize how useful a computer keyboard can be if some keys can be mapped to functions you need more often than those enforced on you by standard mappings. Based on my personal preferences I developed the Whitestone (wσ) keyboard layout, which is a scientific programmer deviation from the international Latin keyboard layout. Currently (2021), the layout is in a liquid state where it might change based on more empirical observations. Please refer to the file whitestone for the most complete information. You are free to make your own deviation.

Key Features

• The 'standard' international (Latin) keyboard layout will still function when it comes to 'pure' and shift strikes.
• All Greek lower and uppercase letters are reachable by using alt or alt + shift on their Latin counterparts.
• Emoji's like 👍, 😉 and ❤ are directly reachable by the keyboard.
• Logical operators like ∨ ∧ ⇔ ⇒ ¬ are directly reachable by the keyboard.
• Mathematical symbols like ∂ ∇ ≠ ≅ ∞ ÷ · are directly reachable by the keyboard.

Installation

On most Linux systems (using X11), keyboard layouts are stored in /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols. Install the keyboard layout stored in <layout_file> with correct privileges (overwriting when needed):

> sudo install -Dm644 <layout_file> /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/<layout_file>

To activate the layout:

> setxkbmap <layout_file>

---

To permanently activate the layout may or may not be more of a hassle. The easiest way is to check the keyboard settings in your desktop environment and see if it is already available to add. If that is not the case it might help to do one or more of the following:

• Add the following to /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml, before </layoutList>

<layout>
  <configItem>
    <name>whitestone</name>
    <shortDescription>wσ</shortDescription>
    <description>Whitestone Keyboard Layout (Scientific Latin)</description>
    <languageList><iso639Id>eng</iso639Id></languageList>
  </configItem>
  <variantList>
    <variant>
      <configItem>
        <name>whitestone</name>
        <description>whitestone</description>
      </configItem>
    </variant>
  </variantList>
</layout>

• Execute > sudo dpkg-reconfigure xkb-data
• Add setxkbmap <layout_filename> to ~/.profile to activate the layout on login: If GNOME is overwriting this setting execute > gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.keyboard active false.

Limitations

• In Ubuntu 18.04 scroll lock in Libreoffice modifies the behaviour of arrow keys. Activating may introduce problems of its own.
• It looks like it is not easily possible to include Unicode characters with a combining character in the xkb keyboard layout. Therefore, the red heart (❤) may end up being black, depending on the program parsing the input.