> and of course, for german keyboard layout devs, rebinding capslock to alt-gr.
I went the other way: use a US layout keyboard, and bind capslock to switch to German layout while capslock is being held down. I find that I need my fancy braces and brackets more than my umlauts. :)
I'm using US-intl (international) right now, supported everywhere I've seen. AltGr+q is ä, AltGr+s is ß, AltGr+y is ü, etc.
Might seem weird at first, but it has most of the special or combined symbols you might need, not just German ones. Other than that, it's your usual US layout suitable for vim/evil, shell, coding, etc.
I went the other way: use a US layout keyboard, and bind capslock to switch to German layout while capslock is being held down. I find that I need my fancy braces and brackets more than my umlauts. :)