get current active keyboard layout(language) in linux

Question

In my C/C++ program I want to know which language is user going to type. I mean the language whose ID is displayed in the corner of the task bar. Like EN or RU or ZH or FR or IT.

I know how to get the list of possible layout:

$ setxkbmap -query | grep layout

output:

layout:     us,ru

But how to know which one is selected right now? (for the current window)

Abortive

There is a risk that there is no common standard for this. Did you read: nabble.documentfoundation.org/… – Ribal

Or maybe this: #7021611 – Ribal

Answer 1

setxkbmap -print isn't helpful in this case, which was also my first idea. I have found a little tool, very easy to compile

sudo apt-get install git
mkdir -p `~/src`
cd `~/src`
git clone https://github.com/nonpop/xkblayout-state.git 
cd xkblayout-state
make

Now you can run the command ./xkblayout-state to get the current layout, e.g.

./xkblayout-state print "%n"                          
German%

or list all installed layouts

./xkblayout-state print "%N"
German
English
English

^{In this case without a trailing %. I would have expected that, because I have not added a \n.}

Walther

works for me, but I noticed it only shows "system" (RU,EN in my case) languages, ignoring ibus Chinese. – Abortive

yes, print "%s %n" shows ru Russian for Russian, en English for English, and en English for Chinese. – Abortive