Swerty Keyboard Layout with working Alt-Gr on Linux Debian 10

install-swerty-altgr-working.md

Background

The Swerty keyboard layout is created by Johan E. Gustafsson and hosted on http://johanegustafsson.net/projects/swerty/

Swerty is released under the MIT Licence.

Since I spend a lot of time getting the right alt-gr key to work I decided to share back my fixes.

Installation

Installation instructions: Swerty for Linux

Add the contents of se.txt to the end of the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/se.

$ sudo bash -c 'cat se.txt >> /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/se'

Then look up the following section in the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.xml:

    <layout>
      <configItem>
        <name>se</name>
        <shortDescription>Swe</shortDescription>
        <description>Sweden</description>
        <languageList><iso639Id>swe</iso639Id></languageList>
      </configItem>
      <variantList>

Add the following variant block after the line :

        <variant>
          <configItem>
            <name>swerty</name>
            <description>Swerty</description>
          </configItem>
        </variant>

Finally, after the line ! variant in the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev.lst add the following line:

  swerty          se: Swerty

Now Swerty should show up as one of the alternative keyboard layouts for Swedish.

US & Swerty Toggle

Since the US layout is still more suitable in some cases (e.g. for coding). It is nice to be able to quickly change between the US and Swerty layout using the "win+space" key combination.

This can be accomplished with

$ setxkbmap -layout 'us,se' -variant ',swerty' -option 'grp:win_space_toggle'

se.txt

//Swerty by Johan E. Gustafsson
partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "swerty" {

    name[Group1]="Sweden - Swerty";

    key <TLDE>  { [     grave,  asciitilde, section, onehalf ]  };
    key <AE01>  { [         1,     exclam                    ]  };
    key <AE02>  { [         2,         at,  quotedbl         ]  };
    key <AE03>  { [         3, numbersign,  sterling         ]  };
    key <AE04>  { [         4,     dollar,  currency         ]  };
    key <AE05>  { [         5,    percent,  EuroSign         ]  };
    key <AE06>  { [         6, asciicircum, dead_circumflex  ]  };
    key <AE07>  { [         7,  ampersand,  braceleft        ]  };
    key <AE08>  { [         8,   asterisk,  bracketleft      ]  };
    key <AE09>  { [         9,  parenleft,  bracketright     ]  };
    key <AE10>  { [         0, parenright,  braceright       ]  };
    key <AE11>  { [     minus, underscore,  dead_diaeresis,  dead_circumflex ]  };
    key <AE12>  { [     equal,       plus,  dead_tilde       ]  };

    key <AD01>  { [         q,          Q                    ]  };
    key <AD02>  { [         w,          W                    ]  };
    key <AD03>  { [         e,          E,  EuroSign         ]  };
    key <AD04>  { [         r,          R                    ]  };
    key <AD05>  { [         t,          T                    ]  };
    key <AD06>  { [         y,          Y                    ]  };
    key <AD07>  { [         u,          U                    ]  };
    key <AD08>  { [         i,          I                    ]  };
    key <AD09>  { [         o,          O,  braceleft        ]  };
    key <AD10>  { [         p,          P,  braceright       ]  };
    key <AD11>  { [         aring,  Aring,  bracketleft,  braceleft ]  };
    key <AD12>  { [dead_acute, dead_grave,  bracketright,  braceright ]  };
    key <AC01>  { [         a,          A                    ]  };
    key <AC02>  { [         s,          S                    ]  };
    key <AC03>  { [         d,          D                    ]  };
    key <AC04>  { [         f,          F                    ]  };
    key <AC05>  { [         g,          G                    ]  };
    key <AC06>  { [         h,          H                    ]  };
    key <AC07>  { [         j,          J                    ]  };
    key <AC08>  { [         k,          K                    ]  };
    key <AC09>  { [         l,          L                    ]  };
    key <AC10>  { [ odiaeresis,  Odiaeresis,  semicolon,  colon ]  };
    key <AC11>  { [ adiaeresis,  Adiaeresis,  apostrophe,  quotedbl ]  };

    key <BKSL>  { [ backslash,        bar                    ]  };
    key <AB01>  { [         z,          Z                    ]  };
    key <AB02>  { [         x,          X                    ]  };
    key <AB03>  { [         c,          C                    ]  };
    key <AB04>  { [         v,          V                    ]  };
    key <AB05>  { [         b,          B                    ]  };
    key <AB06>  { [         n,          N                    ]  };
    key <AB07>  { [         m,          M,  mu               ]  };
    key <AB08>  { [     comma,       less                    ]  };
    key <AB09>  { [    period,    greater,  colon            ]  };
    key <AB10>  { [     slash,   question                    ]  };

    // Add for working right alt-gr key
    include "level3(ralt_switch)"
};