What keyboard model should I choose?

[Duliwi]

Thank you all.

The keyboard for a "German (Switzerland, Macintosh)" layout
would look like this: shown with this command: gkbd-keyboard-display -l ch$'\t'de_mac )
ch_mac_de-m.jpg
and seems not to fit to the picture of the keyboard shown in #1.

That's right. I have not the keyboard "gkbd-keyboard-display -l ch$'\t'de_mac" .
The keyboard "gkbd-keyboard-display -l ch$'\t'de" fits to my keyboard.

-> This means, I was wrong to expect, that "Alt Gr + y" will show me the character ¥. It should show me the character "«" . And it does. So actually my expectation was wrong, and the keyboard works as it should.
Thank you fehlix for pointing this out.

But why did I have this wrong expectation?
Answer: Because I have miss interpreted the content of the file ...

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/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch

... if the /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch file in MX23 is similar to the MX19 version then you have a mismatch between your actual setting (seems to be "German (Switzerland)") and the setting you're referring to with

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key <AB01> { [	y,	Y, 	yen,		Ydiaeresis		]	};

which seems to be further down in the file /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch, in subsection "German (Switzerland, Macintosh)".

Select the latter subsection in the keyboard selection box and perhaps you'll get what you want.

Screenshot_2023-11-18_14-18-27.png

EDIT: It's also possible to edit this (or any keyboard) file to your liking. I've significantly modified the UK definitions./EDIT

Thank you. This is very interesting.
I have changed to "German (Switzerland, Macintosh)" as you suggested and now I got "¥" with "Alt Gr + y".

Actually I do not need "¥". This was only an example.
So I have set back my Layout into "German (Switzerland, NOT Macintosh)"

This means I have now again "«", which is alright.

Question:
Where in the file "/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch" can I see, that I get "«", when I press "Alt Gr + y" ?
I have only found two lines in "/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch" for key <AB01>:

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key <AB01> { [          y,          Y                           ] };
key <AB01> { [	y,	Y, 	yen,		Ydiaeresis		]	};

But where can I see, that I get "«", when I press "Alt Gr + y" ?

[fehlix]

Where in the file "/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch" can I see, that I get "«", when I press "Alt Gr + y" ?

That's probaly somewhere within the german part of the layout definition.
Something like this may help to dive into keyboard layout definitions,
to find some symbols like the »Guillemet« :

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grep -i guillem /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/de

[thomasl]

As @fehlix has mentioned, many keys are inherited as defaults from other layouts, ie we're seeing layers of layouts, building on each other. For your "German (Switzerland)" layout "Latin" seems to be the "base layer":

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    include "latin"
    name[Group1]= "German (Switzerland)";

These keyboard definition files are pretty powerful but alas not very easy to disentangle. There are some help pages around but most of the changes I applied were based on rounds of trial and error.

[Duliwi]

I see. So I would have found it with ...

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$ grep -i guillem /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/latin
    key <AB01>	{ [         z,          Z, guillemotleft,        less ]	};
    key <AB02>	{ [         x,          X, guillemotright,    greater ]	};
    key <AE08>	{ [         8,  parenleft,  bracketleft, guillemotleft]	};
    key <AE09>	{ [         9, parenright, bracketright, guillemotright] };
    key <AB01>	{ [         y,          Y, guillemotleft,        less ]	};
    key <AD11>	{ [bracketleft,   braceleft,  U2039, guillemotleft ]    };
    key <AD12>	{ [bracketright, braceright, U203A, guillemotright ]	};

?

It's ...
key <AB01> { [ y, Y, guillemotleft, less ] }; that corresponds with y;Y;«;<
... in the file "/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/latin"
And yes, this fits to my keyboard.

But strange, that it is in the section ...

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// Slavic Latin ( Albanian, Croatian, Polish, Slovene, Yugoslav)
// common layout

Other question:
How do I interpret key <AB01> ?
"A" is the second bottom row of the keyboard? But what is "B" and "01" ?

[thomasl]

A few pages from my notes:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Custo ... efinitions
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/X_KeyBoard_extension
https://www.charvolant.org/doug/xkb/html/node5.html
https://hack.org/mc/writings/xkb.html