Add swap-i blog post

site/blog/swap-i.md

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+---
+title: Swap the ı and i key on your keyboard for faster modal editing
+description: How to swap the ı and i key on your Turkish keyboard on Linux.
+
+date: 2024-05-20
+
+tags:
+- localisation
+- modal-editors
+---
+
+If you have ever used a Turkish-Q keyboard in combination with a modal
+editor before, you might have noticed that the `i` key is pretty far off
+to the side:
+
+![The placement of the `i` key on the Turkish-Q layout](/assets/turkish-q-i.webp)
+
+This blog post will guide you on how to swap the `ı` key with the `i` key
+(but not the `I` and `İ` keys). This will be a great change if you write primarily
+in English but need the Turkish symbols sometimes.
+
+> There is `tr(us)` in the `xkeyboard_config` package that does something similar to this:
+> 
+> ```cpp
+> // The basic Turkish layout with "i" and "ı" swapped.
+> // Originally by Ali Riza KESKIN <parduscix@yandex.ru>, 2021.
+> partial
+> xkb_symbols "us" {
+> 
+>     include "tr(basic)"
+> 
+>     name[Group1]="Turkish (i and ı swapped)";
+> 
+>     key <AC11>  { type[group1] = "FOUR_LEVEL_SEMIALPHABETIC",
+>                   [          i,         I,     paragraph,          none ]};
+>     key <AD08>  { type[group1] = "FOUR_LEVEL_SEMIALPHABETIC",
+>                   [  idotless,  Iabovedot,    apostrophe,    dead_caron ]};
+> };
+> ```
+> 
+> However, this only swaps the uppercase letters, so the `i` key is unchanged but
+> the uppercase of that key is `I` like in English. However, this is usually not
+> desired as this still reduces your typing speed (as the `iI` key is too far).
+
+Let's create our own layout that does something similar but swaps the lowercase
+letters instead. Here is the code for that:
+
+```cpp
+default partial
+xkb_symbols "basic" {
+    include "tr(basic)"
+
+    name[Group1]="Turkish (i and ı swapped correctly)";
+
+    key <AC11>  { type[group1] = "FOUR_LEVEL_SEMIALPHABETIC",
+                [  idotless, Iabovedot, paragraph , none       ]};
+    key <AD08>  { type[group1] = "FOUR_LEVEL_SEMIALPHABETIC",
+                [  i       , I        , apostrophe, dead_caron ]};
+};
+```
+
+The `default` key is needed because we are going to make this a standalone file.
+Save this to `~/.config/xkb/symbols/tr-swapped-i` and you can tell your WM/DE
+to use the `tr-swapped-i` XKB layout.
+
+In Hyprland (The WM I use) you can do it like this:
+
+```cpp
+# In ~/.config/hypr/hyprland.conf
+input {
+  kb_layout = "tr-swapped-i"
+}
+```
+
+That should swap the `ı` and `i` keys on your WM/DE successfully. However, we are not done
+yet.
+
+The TTY (swap to TTY 2 by doing `CTRL-ALT-F2`) still doesn't use this layout, which is a problem.
+And it seems that the format the TTY uses is a little different.
+Looking at the `kbd` package, it uses a format called `.map`.
+
+Here is a `.map` file that overrides the `trq` layout and swaps the `ı` and `i` keys:
+
+```cpp
+include "/usr/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/trq.map"
+
+keycode 23 = i
+	altgr       keycode 23 = +icircumflex
+	altgr shift keycode 23 = +Icircumflex
+
+keycode 40 = +dotlessi +Idotabove
+```
+
+Save it to the directory where you store your maps.
+
+Note that the path `/usr/share/keymaps` might differ based on your distro. You
+can check what it is it by doing `man loadkeys` and scrolling to the bottom.
+
+After that, consult your distro's docs on how to change the system keyboard locale.
+
+This is how it is done on NixOS:
+
+```nix
+{ pkgs, ... }: {
+  console.keyMap = pkgs.writeText "trq-swapped-i.map" ''
+    include "${pkgs.kbd}/share/keymaps/i386/qwerty/trq.map"
+
+    keycode 23 = i
+    	altgr       keycode 23 = +icircumflex
+    	altgr shift keycode 23 = +Icircumflex
+
+    keycode 40 = +dotlessi +Idotabove
+  '';
+}
+```
+
+And this is how it is done on Arch:
+
+```shell
+cat << :end
+include "/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/trq.map"
+
+keycode 23 = i
+	altgr       keycode 23 = +icircumflex
+	altgr shift keycode 23 = +Icircumflex
+
+keycode 40 = +dotlessi +Idotabove
+:end > /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/trq-swapped-i.map
+
+localectl set-keymap --no-convert tr-swapped-i
+```
+
+After that, your TTY should also use this locale.
+
+Gotta love having to mess with deep parts of your system because the Turkish-Q
+layout did the big mistake of reusing the `i` key as `ı`!
+
+At least I'll type and edit faster now...
+
+[Here is the commit where I implemented this, might be worth a look if you use NixOS.](https://github.com/RGBCube/NCC/commit/6d18066eb5ccefa4539205f3d6721e4a8ff8b97e)