Looking into KDE 4.5, I observed that xkbd has been replaced.

This is a problem for me: As I do not have enough memory to run the entire KDE desktop (500 MB are obviously not enough , I am using the fluxbox window manager along with KDE tools like knetworkmanager and xkbd that dock into the fluxbox system tray.

Is there a way to start the new KDE keyboard layout manager outside a KDE session and to make it dock into a standard system tray?

It runs as part of KDE Daemon (kded4) which is a very lightweight process ( and is probably already running )

Run the following command to load it:

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qdbus org.kde.kded /kded loadModule keyboard

I don't know if it provides a system tray icon anymore however, as it has a Plasma applet....

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plasmoidviewer keyboard_applet

Will show you the applet. not sure if you can use that to dock it though.