Using a Mac OSX *.keyboard layout specification on Ubuntu 11.10

Question

I have recieved from a friend a custom-made keyboard layout, designed (as he puts it) to be a "programmer-friendly port of a combination of the two most common Swedish variants of the Dvorak keyboard layout". He is using Mac OSX, so he just zipped the contents of his ~/Library/KeyboardLayouts and sent it to me. Of course, the files don't seem portable to Ubuntu without modification - at least I don't understand how...

Among the files, the file that seems to do the actual work is a file called Svorak.keyboard, which in fact is an XML file defining the keyboard layout. The first section of the file is shown below:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE keyboard SYSTEM "file://localhost/System/Library/DTDs/Keyboard.dtd">
<keyboard group="0" id="0" name="Svorak" maxout="2">
        <layouts>
        <layout first="0" last="0" modifiers="28" mapSet="a0"/>
    </layouts>
    <modifierMap id="28" defaultIndex="7">
        <keyMapSelect mapIndex="0">
            <modifier keys="command?"/>
            <modifier keys="anyShift command caps?"/>
        </keyMapSelect>
        <keyMapSelect mapIndex="1">
            <modifier keys="anyShift caps?"/>
        </keyMapSelect>
...
    </modifierMap>
    <keyMapSet id="a0">
        <keyMap index="0">
            <key code="0" action="8"/>
            <key code="1" action="o"/>
            <key code="2" action="e"/>
...

Is there any (easy) way I can take this layout and re-map it into a standard Ubuntu format? I'd like to install it alongside my regular QWERTY layout, so I can switch between them using the applet in the status bar etc - in other words, I want to install it as any other installed keyboard layout in Ubuntu.

Is that possible? How?

Answer 1

So the short answer is, "no." The feature you are asking for does not exist.

The XML format you mentioned was introduced in Jaguar and while they published the DTD, that format is specific to Apple. I was not able to find any mention whatsoever of any other operating system importing this XML keyboard format, probably because generally most operating systems come with their own extensive database of keyboard layouts. There are Dvorak layouts bundled with Linux, though they may not be tweaked how your friend tweaked his.

Having said that, if certain features of the layout are important to you, you could try making your own keymap with this tutorial.

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

I have never tried this, but I found an article that might help you

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Howto%3A%20Custom%20keyboard%20layout%20definitions

I know this isn't first hand experience, so I don't know if I should post this as a comment and not an answer, but I'm sure a nice mod will let me know :)