index.md (3963B)
1 SVKBD: Simple Virtual Keyboard 2 ============================== 3 This is a simple virtual keyboard, intended to be used in environments, 4 where no keyboard is available. 5 6 Installation 7 ------------ 8 9 $ make 10 $ make install 11 12 This will create by default `svkbd-mobile-intl`, which is svkbd using an international 13 keyboard layout with multiple layers and overlays, and optimised for mobile devices. 14 15 You can create svkbd for additional layouts by doing: 16 17 $ make LAYOUT=$layout 18 19 This will take the file `layout.$layout.h` and create `svkbd-$layout`. 20 `make install` will then pick up the new file and install it accordingly. 21 22 Layouts 23 ------- 24 25 The following layouts are available: 26 27 * **Mobile Layouts:** 28 * ``mobile-intl`` - A small international layout optimised for mobile devices. This layout consists of multiple layers which 29 can be switched on the fly, and overlays that appear on long-press of certain keys, adding input ability for 30 diacritics and other variants, as well as some emoji. The layers are: 31 * a basic qwerty layer 32 * a layer for numeric input, arrows, and punctuation 33 * a layer for function keys, media keys, and arrows 34 * a cyrillic layer (ЙЦУКЕН) 35 * a dialer/numeric layer 36 * ``mobile-plain`` - This is a plain layout with only a qwerty layer and numeric/punctuation layer. It was 37 originally made for [sxmo](https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/). 38 * **Traditional layouts**: 39 * ``en`` - An english layout without layers (QWERTY) 40 * ``de`` - A german layout (QWERTZ) 41 * ``ru`` - A russian layout (ЙЦУКЕН) 42 * ``sh`` - A serbo-croatian layout using latin script (QWERTZ) 43 44 Usage 45 ----- 46 47 $ svkbd-mobile-intl 48 49 This will open svkbd at the bottom of the screen, showing the default 50 international layout. 51 52 $ svkbd-mobile-intl -d 53 54 This tells svkbd to announce itself being a dock window, which then 55 is managed differently between different window managers. If using dwm 56 and the dock patch, then this will make svkbd being managed by dwm and 57 some space of the screen being reserved for it. 58 59 $ svkbd-en -g 400x200+1+1 60 61 This will start svkbd-en with a size of 400x200 and at the upper left 62 window corner. 63 64 For layouts that consist of multiple layers, you can enable layers on program start through either the ``-l`` flag or 65 through the ``SVKBD_LAYERS`` environment variable. They both take a comma separated list of layer names (as defined in 66 your ``layout.*.h``). Use the ``↺`` button in the bottom-left to cycle through all the layers. 67 68 Some layouts come with overlays that will show when certain keys are hold pressed for a longer time. For 69 example, a long press on the ``a`` key will enable an overview showing all kinds of diacritic combinations for ``a``. 70 71 Overlay functionality interferes with the ability to hold a key and have it outputted repeatedly. You can disable 72 overlay functionality with the ``-O`` flag or by setting the environment variable ``SVKBD_ENABLEOVERLAYS=0``. There is 73 also a key on the function layer of the keyboard itself to enable/disable this behaviour on the fly. Its label shows 74 ``≅`` when the overlay functionality is enabled and ``≇`` when not. 75 76 Notes 77 ----- 78 79 This virtual keyboard does not actually modify the X keyboard layout, the ``mobile-intl``, ``mobile-plain`` and ``en`` layouts simply rely on a standard US QWERTY layout (setxkbmap us) being activated, the other layouts (``de``, ``ru``, ``sh``) require their respective XKB keymaps to be active. 80 81 If you use another XKB layout you will get unpredictable output that does not match the labels on the virtual keycaps! 82 83 84 Development 85 ----------- 86 You can [browse](//git.suckless.org/svkbd) its source code repository or get a 87 copy using git with the following command: 88 89 git clone https://git.suckless.org/svkbd 90 91 92 Download 93 -------- 94 * [MIT/X Consortium license](//git.suckless.org/svkbd/plain/LICENSE) 95 * [svkbd 0.4.2](//dl.suckless.org/tools/svkbd-0.4.2.tar.gz) (25kb) (2024-11-26)