Czech-American keyboard

Introduction to Layouts

A Keyboard for Czecho-Americans

A us_cs keyboard for X11 (Linux I/O system)

The keyboard described here allows a person accustomed to a USA international keyboard, one which has no diacritics, to type all Czech characters, WITHOUT toggling between two keyboards and without using dead key diacritics.

The layout is shown here: us_cs_LAYOUT

On this keyboard, a letter with diacritics is made by holding down the Rgrave key and typing the letter. Rgrave is the key on the right side of the space bar, labeled ISO_L.. on the layout and usually labeled "Alt" on the actual keyboard.

So, for example, c-caron = č , is typed by holding down the Alt key and pressing c ; , for a capital Č, add Shift or use CapsLock.

In Czech two letters, e and u, accept two possible diacritics. Therefore é and ú are done in the standard way, but ě uses Alt+w and ů uses Alt+p.

All keystrokes not using the Rgrave key are the same as on the us keyboard.

Steps for installing this Czecho-American keyboard on your linux computer:

Find the directory which holds layouts
cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols
Backup your existing layout in file us
sudo cp us usDistro
Download the new file us from here .
Copy the new us over the old us
Reboot
Do not forget: In your computer's "keyboard preferences," select the layout called "us-international with dead keys". On Ubuntu 'keyboard preferences" are at : system-> preferences-> keyboard->layouts.

Tested only on Ubuntu , but should work for all X.org Xservers.
Released under GNU licence. No guarantees, but give it a try.

The "theory" behind creating custom keyboards is explained HERE. The same bilingual layout can be used on non-linux computers (Max, Windows..) but their installation procedures for the new us file are different.

Resources for non-linux users: