Custom Swiss keyboard layout variants and unicode input.

Layout overview

• Base layout: ch_benou_full (custom, defined in xkb)
• Two variants loaded simultaneously:
  • fr_code — optimized for coding (symbols accessible via AltGr)
  • fr_typing — optimized for typing French (accents easier)
• Toggle between variants: Alt+Shift (xkb option: grp:alt_shift_toggle)
• Caps Lock → Ctrl: ctrl:nocaps

Dead keys on Wayland

fr_typing maps <AE12> to dead_circumflex, but a dead key only becomes ê if something downstream composes it. GTK 4.20 dropped its built-in compose fallback on Wayland when no input method is running — it now defers to the compositor’s text-input-v3, and sway has no IME behind that protocol. So GTK4 apps (ghostty, and with it nvim/tmux; also zathura, pavucontrol) silently swallowed ^+e. Fix, in .zprofile:

export GTK_IM_MODULE=simple

This restores GTK’s own compose table — no daemon, no IME package. It must be in the environment of the GTK process: .zprofile works because the tty login shell that starts sway exports it down to every client. The zsh -l that ghostty runs as its shell is inside the process, too late to count.

Two things that made this confusing:

• Firefox kept working. It links libgtk-3, which still has the fallback. A toolkit difference, not a layout one.
• é è à ç kept working. They are direct keysyms in this layout (<AC10>, <AD11>, <AC11>, <AE04>) and never touch the compose path. Only ê â î ô û, ¨ and ~ accents broke.

Unicode character input

Works in any GTK app (terminal, browser, etc.):

• Short codepoints (4 hex digits): Ctrl+Shift+u → type hex code → Enter Example: Ctrl+Shift+u → f488 → Enter

• Long codepoints (via nerf font / special): In nvim insert mode: Ctrl+v u then 4-digit hex Or: Ctrl+v U then 8-digit hex

Key repeat

• Delay: 300ms (before repeat starts)
• Rate: 100 keys/second

Useful xkb commands

• Check current layout/variant: swaymsg -t get_inputs | grep -A5 keyboard

• Reload input config (after sway reload): $mod+Shift+c

xkb custom layout location

~/.config/xkb/symbols/ch_benou_full

libxkbcommon searches $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/xkb on its own, so no symlink into /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ and no evdev.xml edit is needed — the sudo ln -s instructions in that directory’s README.md are obsolete.