Hi!
This is my first post here. I’m trying to create a keyboard for Wounaan Meu (noa) by following the tutorial. However, I need the layout to match the physical Spanish keyboard below, so I can program all the keys (I want to create a positional keyboard).
Is this possible? I’ve imported a Spanish Keyman keyboard (KBDSP.DLL) to try, but it’s mapped to physical US keyboards.
I don’t know whether I’ve used all the right terminology. Is my issue clear?
I’m also trying to modify the code of a US English keyboard. It distinguishes between left and right Alt, but I don’t want it to. Do I need to change all the commands that are RALT K_… one-by-one? If so, change them to what?
Thanks in advance for your time and help with these issues!
Welcome! and thanks for your post.
There is an option in Keyman Developer to import from a Windows system keyboard. I just tried it with “Spanish” but the resulting keyboard doesn’t match your image completely. Perhaps there are several Spanish keyboards?
It is also possible to use a copy of a “basic” keyboard (from https://github.com/keymanapp/keyboards/tree/master/release/basic) as a basis for a new keyboard. This currently, however, requires a lot of manual renaming of files and the layout for basic_kbdes doesn’t match your image.
On the Layout tab in Keyman Developer, it is possible to use the “Code” tab at the bottom of the pane, together with Edit, Replace to do a Find and Replace. So one could change RALT to ALT throughout. Normal practice, however, is to reserve the Right Alt key (often labeled “Alt Gr” as in your image) for adding additional characters, leaving the left Alt key to be used in keyboard shortcut combinations, such as Alt+F for the File menu.
Can you provide more information about the keyboard you picture above? How does it show up in Windows Settings, for example?
Thanks so much for your reply, @drowe.
In Windows Settings, the keyboard shows up as Latin American QWERTY. This all came about because I need to create a keyboard for our translation team in Panama, and they all have Spanish computers with the keyboard I pictured. I was hoping I could make a positional keyboard matching their physical keyboards. If I have to create a mnemonic keyboard based off a US layout, I don’t even know where to start. Every row of letters has a different number of keys than US keyboards.
On a different note, there are a couple of letters that I need and can’t find in the Unicode database. They are “Latin lowercase letter turned v” U+028c and its capital U+0245, each with diaeresis above and each with tilde above.
Do you happen to know how I can produce these? I’ve tried it using " and ~ deadkeys plus the character, but it doesn’t work. These deadkeys do work with other characters, though (ä ã, etc.).
@stefanfk I’m very sorry that I missed your response and further questions. Have you been able to resolve these issues?
Some characters (such as a with diaeresis) are encoded as a single character in Unicode, but others require the use of a base character plus a combining diacritic. For the cases you mention, you’ll need to generate U+028C U+0308 and U+0245 U+0308. You can examine the keyboard source (.kmn) file to see how the keyboard generates a diaeresis for “a” and use that same logic for whichever key you’ve chosen for the turned “v”. Then do the same for the tilde using U+0303 for the combining tilde.
If this doesn’t address your questions, please write again.
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