Editing existing keyboards

Keyman
1

How can I edit existing keyman keyboards in keyman developer? I like the Amharic keyboard layout (where I type c+v and it becomes one character), I just want to replace the character with my own. if I can’t edit that keyboard, how can I code something like that? I’m not a coder so please explain it in the easiest way possible, thanks.

also, can I add my own fonts I made from the calligraphr website?

2

Welcome to the community @Tj1,

A few questions we would like to ask:

  1. Do you want the changes to be for personal use or to be distributed to the public?
  2. Could you confirm that this is the Amharic keyboard or check the list of Amharic keyboards?
  3. It would be a great help to show the screenshot of the keys you would like to implement?

Regarding the fonts, as long as they are Unicode fonts and under an open license then it is possible to distribute the fonts. Would you able to ZIP the fonts or use Google drive for that?

We look forward to hear back from you.

3

Hello I hope you can see this reply. I want the changes to be for the public, I’m making a keyboard for a group of people. The first link is the type of keyboard I need for my script.
I haven’t made a font yet but this is an idea(picture below, it’s not finished yet). I can use calligraphr to turn it into a font but I’m not sure if calligraphr is compatible with keyman. Calligraphr doesn’t support google drive but I can turn it into a zip file.

9C9AE494-39DC-481C-8009-0871052805B4.jpg828×1472 391 KB

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Your font produces shapes that correspond to Unicode code points. If the characters you want to display are not (yet) in Unicode, you can use Private Use Area code points, but then the data will only make sense if that font is used.

Keyman produces Unicode code points according to what keyboard is being used. It can produce PUA code points if the keyboard is written to generate them.

If the code points produced by the keyboard match the code points supported by the font, then the character shapes should appear. (That’s a simplified summary of the process, but the point is that the connection between the keyboard and the font is the code points that you choose.)

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The tutorials at Keyman Developer 16.0 User Guide explain how to use Keyman Developer.

Following the “Documentation” link for a keyboard will (usually) show you more about how the keyboard behaves. See, for example, the documentation for the keyboard Mengheng referenced above: አማርኛ (Amharic) Keyboard Help

Following the “Source” link for a keyboard will show you the code in the GitHub repository. This may give you ideas on how to make your keyboard work like another one in the repository.

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