How to get British English on a US Keyboard

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davemx
Posts: 319
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2018 2:31 pm

How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#1 Post by davemx »

Just posted on my blog.

The reason is that if you order one of the cheaper mini-keyboards from, say, eBay, the likelihood is that it's American. So I made my own "gb" file:

https://davespagnol.wordpress.com/2018/ ... -keyboard/
Desktop: Mini-Box M350 with Asus H110i-plus motherboard, Pentium G4600 processor, 2TB SSD and 16Gb RAM DDR4-2133
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fehlix
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Re: How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#2 Post by fehlix »

davemx wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 3:14 pm Just posted on my blog.

The reason is that if you order one of the cheaper mini-keyboards from, say, eBay, the likelihood is that it's American. So I made my own "gb" file:

https://davespagnol.wordpress.com/2018/ ... -keyboard/
Wouldn't selecting GB keyboard layout with -> Settings -> Keyboard just do this type of remapping?
As we not all have US or GB keyboards, could you go in detail what's missing here.
I just switched keyboard within keyboard setting and do get a "£"-sign ,
when pressing Shift+3
Here the pictures for those like me having neither of both:
GB-Keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_U ... ingdom.svg
US:Keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_U ... oAltGr.svg
Gigabyte Z77M-D3H, Intel Xeon E3-1240 V2 (Quad core), 32GB RAM,
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Richard
Posts: 1577
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2008 10:31 am

Re: How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#3 Post by Richard »

From the menu, open All Settings > Keyboard > Layout
Deactivate/uncheck "Use System Defaults"
in Keyboard Layouts, "Add"
open English UK, and select "English UK" for the standard UK keyboard.
Click on OK which brings you back to the Keyboard config, click on Layout, again.
If you want English UK to be always the default, highlight it
and use the arrows to move it to the head of the list.

Click All Settings, Close and Reboot for the English UK keyboard as default.
Thinkpad T430 & Dell Latitude E7450, both with MX-21.3.1
kernal 5.10.0-26-amd64 x86_64; Xfce-4.18.0; 8 GB RAM
Intel Core i5-3380M, Graphics, Audio, Video; & SSDs.

davemx
Posts: 319
Joined: Sun Aug 12, 2018 2:31 pm

Re: How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#4 Post by davemx »

fehlix wrote: Tue Oct 02, 2018 3:43 pm
Wouldn't selecting GB keyboard layout with -> Settings -> Keyboard just do this type of remapping?
As we not all have US or GB keyboards, could you go in detail what's missing here.
I just switched keyboard within keyboard setting and do get a "£"-sign ,
when pressing Shift+3
Here the pictures for those like me having neither of both:
GB-Keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_U ... ingdom.svg
US:Keyboard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_U ... oAltGr.svg
My keyboard is for the USA because I got it from China (does that make sense?). Compared to the UK settings, the @ and " keys are the wrong way around. There is no £ sign. Certain other keys are different, and one missing altogether. But the worst thing about the US keyboard is that the Right-Alt is the same as the Left-Alt but on the UK keyboard it is the third-level shift key. My aim was to get a simple UK-friendly keyboard on one with US key tops. I don't want to switch from one keyboard setting to another! The other thing is, that by following this example, you can create any keyboard layout you want!

My aim is to have a keyboard based on what's on the key tops (i.e., USA layout), whilst extending it for use in the UK.
Desktop: Mini-Box M350 with Asus H110i-plus motherboard, Pentium G4600 processor, 2TB SSD and 16Gb RAM DDR4-2133
Printer/Scanner: Brother MFC-J5335W
Laptop: Lenovo V15 ADA
Media Centre: Lenovo Q190

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Richard
Posts: 1577
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2008 10:31 am

Re: How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#5 Post by Richard »

You'll need to source keycaps and pop off the wrong ones and change them.
Thinkpad T430 & Dell Latitude E7450, both with MX-21.3.1
kernal 5.10.0-26-amd64 x86_64; Xfce-4.18.0; 8 GB RAM
Intel Core i5-3380M, Graphics, Audio, Video; & SSDs.

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baldyeti
Posts: 678
Joined: Sat Dec 05, 2009 4:37 pm

Re: How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#6 Post by baldyeti »

Perhaps you could try the US International Keyboard layout ?

Sorry, this article is for kde but shows what is possible, you'd have to google for how to enable this on MX/XFCE.

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Richard
Posts: 1577
Joined: Fri Dec 12, 2008 10:31 am

Re: How to get British English on a US Keyboard

#7 Post by Richard »

I use the US International AltGr dead key for English and Spanish.
The £ sign is at AltGr-Shift-4.
The regular US International is probably better if you don't need French, German or Spanish.

Here are a few sources for individual keycaps to fix the China keyboards from US to UK:
https://www.massdrop.com/top-list/Keycaps/type--Custom
https://www.reddit.com/r/MechanicalKeyb ... m_keycaps/
https://deskthority.net/keyboards-f2/fa ... 11276.html

Apologies for misreading.your intent.
Thinkpad T430 & Dell Latitude E7450, both with MX-21.3.1
kernal 5.10.0-26-amd64 x86_64; Xfce-4.18.0; 8 GB RAM
Intel Core i5-3380M, Graphics, Audio, Video; & SSDs.

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