Does the keyboard remapping use xkb instead of xmodmap for xorg?

[Srijan1214]

Hi,

I am very new with the whole keyboard remappings in Linux.

I really like this application. I use Ubuntu 20.04 with Gnome 3.36. I had a lot of issues with xmodmap (which was recommended on most of my online searches) only to find out that xmodmap is no longer supported by Gnome.

I just wanted to ask if this application uses xkb under the hood for xorg environments. Or does it do something completely different?

Thank you for your time.

[sezanzeb]

It works with evdev

1. It grabs a device (e.g. /dev/input/event3), so that the key events won't reach X11/Wayland anymore source
2. Reads the events from it (evtest can do it, you can also do cat /dev/input/event3 which yields binary stuff) source
3. Looks up the mapping if that event maps to anything source
4. Injects the output event in a new device that key-mapper created (another new path in /dev/input, device name is suffixed by "mapped") source, new device
5. Forwards any events that should not be mapped to anything in another new device (device name is suffixed by "forwarded") source, new device

This stuff is going on as a daemon in the background, also see https://github.com/sezanzeb/key-mapper/blob/main/readme/development.md#files

Additional optional stuff can be done with xkb on top of the key-mapper devices ("mapped" and "forwarded") #33, which is currently in development