đź—ş Keyman Roadmap - March 2022

For version 16.0
Please try to include

  1. Shortcut to emoji keyboard in Android. It’s simple built in routine to map. Or gesture swipe to space bar to emoji keyboard
  2. Ability to disable “dot” to indicate popup keys in mobile
  3. Display 2 or 3 labels (letters) on keys
  4. Windows, mac and Linux version to support word suggestion, or at least Windows

At least for Windows, word suggestion should be enabled.

Hi @mayura,

Thanks for the feedback. The changes to the on screen keyboard are scheduled for v17 per the blog post. We don’t have a current timeframe on supporting predictive text on desktop – it’s a very big job. For emoji support, we can consider that at the same time as we look at the gesture support for switching keyboards (see spec: multitap and flick for touch keyboards · Issue #5029 · keymanapp/keyman · GitHub).

Add Google Voice Typing shortcut in the Keyman Keyboard next to suggestion bar in Android

Please include it version 16. It’s a simple call in built in Android API

Most third party apps are using this feature.

Also, if the Google Voice typing language can be linked to the Keyman keyboard language, it would be great. If the API allows it

Please see my discussion in your linked issue.

Hi all,
Hope you are doing great!
I was wondering when developer version 15 will be released. It looks like there is nothing mentioned on the 2022 roadmap! I might be mistaken though.
Also I don’t remember if we can install Keyman Developer beta alongside the stable version.

Thank
Ibrahima

@ibrahima, we’ve just released Keyman 15! See :tada: Keyman 15.0 is now available!

You can install Keyman Developer 15 alongside any reasonably recent version of Keyman for Windows. With Keyman Developer 14 and earlier versions, you must have the same version of Keyman for Windows (Keyman Desktop) installed.

Thank you very much Marc. I did that. Now I cannot see any of the new features when compiling keyboards, like Capitals at the beginning of sentences etc…
Are those mentioned in the roadmap implemented yet?

Cheers
Ibrahima

Sorry for delayed reply. The start-of-sentence detection and caps lock functionality is implemented on the keyboard side. You can read the following topic for details: Casing support

Please note that we have a couple of patches that we are about to apply to the release in order to get 100% correct behaviour, due to a couple of issues we discovered after release. These fixes are currently undergoing testing before we push them out. See #6865 and #6849 for details.

Adding a wishlist item for the roadmap that is likely deep into the “wish” realm, but here it goes… A particular problem that I’ve been facing is having a high number of alternative glyphs for a particular code point (a dozen or more). Text input becomes labour intensive because it requires repeated application menu navigation and selection of a stylistic set in a dialog box to set the alternative symbol. I’d really like to simply key in the symbol with a modifier and have the glyph appear with the stylistic set applied as needed.

I imagine Keyman emits a character code that the operating system then passes along to the application in focus. If this is right, can an operating system receive something more than just the character code from Keyman? Could it receive an OpenType object (or other character object) with the attributes set that would specify the stylstic set?

If there is any possibility for this, I think it would open some new doors to composition capability and user productivity. The roadmap request then would be to take Keyman from a character composition tool to a character-object one.

Hi @dyacob,

Thanks for the feature suggestion. Sadly, this is well outside what we can do directly with Keyman. Opentype feature selection is very much application-specific, and not something that we have access to. AFAIK, the vast majority of applications have no support for Opentype feature selection or stylistic sets. The best you could probably do is have some application-specific macro but that would then be limited to working with that app in any case.

That said, the web platform could open up more possibilities here. You could experiment with javascript to do this kind of thing via CSS, and then embed that with call statements in Keyman.

Thanks @Marc , I’ll look into a macro-based solution. You’ve reminded me that Microsoft Office (2016 and later) now supports JavaScript, on par with VBA. Perhaps Word, Excel, etc can even run the KeymanWeb scripts. I’d be interested to know if any has tried this and how it went.

KeymanWeb would not run in Office Javascript environment because it requires the DOM.

My features request: all those features I requested initially, and which the team said is possible with Keyman. :smile:

Thinking of LDML support and the expectation that television vendors would leverage an LDML library to support text input via a TV remote control; will a new keyboard profile for these devices be made available in Keyman Developer? Apologies if I overlooked this on the roadmap.

We do not have this kind of input device on the roadmap (nor is it part of the new LDML keyboard spec). However, given that many TV remotes use an on screen keyboard and then directional keys on the remote to select keys on the OSK, there’d be nothing to stop them using LDML keyboards as the OSK.

Thanks @Marc , I’m inspired now to give it a try for Amharic with a dummy layout that simply lists letters alphabetically. Then the 4 keyboard arrow keys, plus Enter, are the only interpretted keystrokes. This would be a close simulation, I’m interested to explore what new issues or obstacles would be found.

Hi all
I hope you are well. I was wondering if there is any workshop planned for new fearutres on Keyman 15. I also want to know if there are any tutorials that address LDML.
Thanks
Ibrahima

There is a tutorial available at this link for Keyman15….Kent Schroeder

Hi Kent
Thank you very much for the link. I haven’t been through everything but it looks like just a normal (beginner) Keyman tutorial. I am spécifically looking for new features like implementing Automatic capitalization etc…
Will look into it to see if any new feature is addressed.

Thanks
Ibrahima

Hi Ibrahima,

Yes, it is a basic tutorial. The main new feature it covers is the new method for testing a touch keyboard. It does not automatic capitalization.

Kent