# backstory

historically it’s worked out that i need at least 2 layouts at the computer - english and russian, plus i’ve long been using colemak-type layouts (vanilla / dh / caws) and my own modifications for russian like rulemak_dh or rulemak_caws (see rulemak-caws)

and all that on two different matrices - regular staggered ansi and split columnar (desktop use at home and mobile use on a laptop).

haven’t managed to reach some ideal yet - all that’s clear is that ansi and split keyboards need different layouts~

of course it’d be cool to ditch ansi keyboards entirely. but a couple times a week i have to use a laptop, and lugging a split around every time isn’t always convenient - so i constantly need to edit layout configs, adjust them for different keyboards, different tasks.

# xkb pain

xkb (x keyboard extension) is the standard keyboard layout system in linux. it’s under the hood of both x11 and wayland, among other things.

it can do a lot, most importantly it’s big text config files that look roughly like this:

key <AD01> {
    type[group1]= "ALPHABETIC",
    symbols[Group1]= [ q, Q, backslash, division ]
};
key <AD02> {
    type[group1]= "ALPHABETIC",
    symbols[Group1]= [ w, W, U0312, division ]
};

that’s only 2 little keys, and a keyboard has fifty-odd symbols, then multiply by the number of languages - you get a huge awkward file, to edit it you gotta sit there with a keysym table, manually rewrite symbols, constantly checking so you don’t screw up.

all of this is inconvenient, easy to mess up and so on and so forth..

basically, this pissed me off enough that i vibe-coded xkb.sccl.cc.

# xkb.sccl.cc

nothing special - just a QoL thingy.

Zine - HTML+CSS+JS, static, everything client-side.

all the standard xkb symbols for binding are already on the site, but xkb can input any unicode characters, so you don’t have to limit yourself to those.

# contributing

the site stores its config in localdata in its own format, you can download it as json at any time.

to add new layouts you can create a PR: where you gotta drop that json into assets/presets/

a pr on github is fine too, but it’s not quite as convenient for me

maybe later i’ll add direct import from an existing xkb config. would be handy.