Swiss German Developer Keyboard Layout

A slightly modified keyboard layout for swiss programmers. The layout is inspired by the Magerman's Swiss Developer Keyboard.

With this approach no hardware is required. All you need to do is install your preferred layout and you are good to go.

Differences to the default layout

The two most notable changes are:

• Option for no dead keys (recommended)
• Easier access to [ ] via AltGr + 6,7 and { } AltGr + 8,9

The full layout can be seen in the pictures below.

Base

AltGr / Ctrl + Shift

Ctrl

Shift

What Does "No Dead Keys" Mean?

Dead Keys refer to the modifier keys like ` and ~, that by default wait for another letter to be pressed. With a nodeadkeys layout, the symbols will be instered imediately after pressing it.

Setup

Windows
Download the layout (folder) you like and execute the setup.exe. After a restart, the layout should work fine. The setup.exe can also be used to remove the layout again.

Linux
The remapping is done via xkb, which should work for any desktop environment for Xorg as well as Wayland.

# Copy the layout files to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xkb
cp -r linux/xkb ~/.config/

# Apply the changes 
# Note: the warning about additional symbols that could not be mapped can be ignored
xkbcomp -I$HOME/.config/xkb $HOME/.config/xkb/keymap-chpn.txt $DISPLAY

# If the layout works: Add the line above in your .profile or .xsessionrc

# In theory this should apply it as well, but doesn't for me :(
setxkbmap -layout ch -variant de_nodeadkeys -option chpn:chprogletters

Generate your own

The windows keyboard layouts were generated with the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC).

The klc files can be used to modify and generate your own layouts.