In my work on the Lake Baikal Dimensions of Biodiversity project I frequently translate texts and correspondence between Russian and English. I never learned to use a standard Russian keyboard so I rely on a phonetic keyboard. However, some of the default letter placements on Ubuntu make no sense to me (Ж mapped to V? Seriously?) and, more importantly, they’re very different from the OS X phonetic Russian keyboard I’m already accustomed to. I spent some time today reconfiguring the keyboard layout to my liking; here’s a quick guide if you would like to do the same.
First, open up a terminal and navigate to the location where the keyboard configurations are stored (see below). Then create a backup of the Russian keyboard file in case anything goes wrong or you decide you want things back the way they were.
cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols
sudo cp ru ru_backupNext, open up the ru file in your editor of choice (for me, it’s emacs).
sudo emacs ruAt this point you’ll see a file that looks like this:
// based on
// russian standard keyboard
// AEN <[email protected]>
// 2001/12/23 by Leon Kanter <[email protected]>
// 2005/12/09 Valery Inozemtsev <[email protected]>
// Windows layout
default partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "winkeys" {
include "ru(common)"
name[Group1]= "Russian";
key <AE03> { [ 3, numerosign ] };
key <AE04> { [ 4, semicolon ] };
key <AE05> { [ 5, percent ] };
key <AE06> { [ 6, colon ] };
key <AE07> { [ 7, question ] };
key <AE08> { [ 8, asterisk ] };
key <AB10> { [ period, comma ] };
key <BKSL> { [ backslash, slash ] };
};
partial hidden alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "common" {
key <AE01> { [ 1, exclam ] };
key <AE02> { [ 2, quotedbl ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, numbersign ] };
key <AE04> { [ 4, asterisk ] };(but way longer). To edit the phonetic keyboard, you’ll want to scroll down to
the phonetic layout, indicated by xkb_symbols "phonetic".
Now comes the long, tedious part where you change all the offending letter placements. I did this by comparing all of the keys to a picture of the OS X phonetic Russian keyboard and editing the key mappings accordingly. But you can take advantage of my labors and just copy/paste my settings into your file:
partial alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "phonetic" {
name[Group1]= "Russian (phonetic)";
key <AE01> { [ 1, exclam ] };
key <AE02> { [ 2, at ] };
key <AE03> { [ 3, numbersign ] };
key <AE04> { [ 4, dollar ] };
key <AE05> { [ 5, percent ] };
key <AE06> { [ 6, asciicircum ] };
key <AE07> { [ 7, ampersand ] };
key <AE08> { [ 8, asterisk ] };
key <AE09> { [ 9, parenleft ] };
key <AE10> { [ 0, parenright ] };
key <AE11> { [Cyrillic_softsign,Cyrillic_SOFTSIGN ] };
key <AB09> { [ period, greater ] };
key <AB10> { [ slash, question ] };
key <AB08> { [ comma, less ] };
key <AC10> { [ semicolon, colon ] };
key <AC11> { [ apostrophe, quotedbl ] };
key <LSGT> { [ bar, brokenbar ] };
key <TLDE> { [ Cyrillic_shcha, Cyrillic_SHCHA ] };
key <LatQ> { [ Cyrillic_ya, Cyrillic_YA ] };
key <LatZ> { [ Cyrillic_ze, Cyrillic_ZE ] };
key <LatS> { [ Cyrillic_es, Cyrillic_ES ] };
key <LatA> { [ Cyrillic_a, Cyrillic_A ] };
key <LatW> { [ Cyrillic_sha, Cyrillic_SHA ] };
key <LatC> { [ Cyrillic_tse, Cyrillic_TSE ] };
key <LatX> { [ Cyrillic_ha, Cyrillic_HA ] };
key <LatD> { [ Cyrillic_de, Cyrillic_DE ] };
key <LatE> { [ Cyrillic_ie, Cyrillic_IE ] };
key <LatV> { [ Cyrillic_ve, Cyrillic_VE ] };
key <LatF> { [ Cyrillic_ef, Cyrillic_EF ] };
key <LatT> { [ Cyrillic_te, Cyrillic_TE ] };
key <LatR> { [ Cyrillic_er, Cyrillic_ER ] };
key <LatN> { [ Cyrillic_en, Cyrillic_EN ] };
key <LatB> { [ Cyrillic_be, Cyrillic_BE ] };
key <LatH> { [ Cyrillic_che, Cyrillic_CHE ] };
key <LatG> { [ Cyrillic_ghe, Cyrillic_GHE ] };
key <LatY> { [ Cyrillic_yeru, Cyrillic_YERU ] };
key <LatM> { [ Cyrillic_em, Cyrillic_EM ] };
key <LatJ> { [ Cyrillic_shorti, Cyrillic_SHORTI ] };
key <LatU> { [ Cyrillic_u, Cyrillic_U ] };
key <LatK> { [ Cyrillic_ka, Cyrillic_KA ] };
key <LatI> { [ Cyrillic_i, Cyrillic_I ] };
key <LatO> { [ Cyrillic_o, Cyrillic_O ] };
key <LatL> { [ Cyrillic_el, Cyrillic_EL ] };
key <LatP> { [ Cyrillic_pe, Cyrillic_PE ] };
key <AD11> { [ Cyrillic_yu, Cyrillic_YU ] };
key <AE12> { [Cyrillic_hardsign,Cyrillic_HARDSIGN ] };
key <AD12> { [ Cyrillic_zhe, Cyrillic_ZHE ] };
key <BKSL> { [ Cyrillic_e, Cyrillic_E ] };
};Note: I didn’t bother mapping Ё to anything because I never use it.
Save the file and exit. At this point I restarted my computer, expecting the new settings to take effect automatically as the helpful tutorials I read suggested. However, on Ubuntu 14.04 one more step is needed; open up a terminal and type:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xkb-dataAnd you’re all set!