Topic Compatibility with French Keyboard

I am using Keyman with Vista, working with a French AZERTY keyboard. When I am activating a virtual Keyman keyboard, designed for a French keyboard, the French keyboard of the system is disactivated, replaced by the English default key assignment (QWERTY), and the virtual keyboard does not work as intended. How can I keep the underlying French system keyboard when a virtual keyboard is activated?

Bernard

Hi Bernard,

I've replied to your query via email.


Kind regards,

Paul Durdin

I am experiencing a similar problem in Windows XP. Whenever I activate a Keyman keyboard, my azerty keyboard becomes querty. Would it be possible to post the solution for this problem on the forum?

Joris,

The solution depends on the Keyman keyboard you are using. There are two kinds of Keyman keyboard layouts - 'positional' and 'mnemonic'.

A mnemonic layout will always use the currently selected Windows layout to do its mapping - so it will work properly with the French keyboard, for instance.

A positional layout, on the other hand, will keep the same layout, regardless of the selected Windows layout.

Some older Keyman keyboards were designed as positional layouts, but should have probably been mnemonic. Some questions for you that may help clarify the situation further:

Which keyboard(s) are you using?

Which version of Keyman are you using?

How are you selecting the keyboards (clicking on the Keyman icon/associating with a Windows language in Keyman Configuration/Adding the Keyman keyboard to Windows Keyboard Layouts/any other way)?

Thanks for the reply and the explanation.
I am using the ISIS (Hindi) Keyboard with Keyman 6.0. I have also tried older Keyman keyboards, both for Hindi and transcription. These Keyman keyboards worked perfectly with a previous version of Keyman, but also become querty when used with Keyman 6.0.
I have tried various ways of selecting the Keyman keyboards: clicking on the Keyman icon, and associating with a Windows language in Keyman Configuration. All give the same (querty) result.
Best regards,
Joris

Joris,

This is one of those areas where an improvement in the keyboard functionality looks initially like a regression. Keyman 5.0 did not really understand European keyboards - which meant that some combinations were not translated correctly.

For instance, in Keyman 5, a keyboard designed to use ['] on a US keyboard would not use ['] on a French keyboard, nor would it use [ù], hence the rule for that key was completely unavailable. Some keys would move, but not all of them - for instance, the 'A' would move from its US position (ASDF, 3rd row) next to caps lock, up a row (AZERTY).

These issues meant that many Keyman 5 keyboards just could not be used on European hardware keyboards.

In Keyman 6, we added the concept of positional and mnemonic layouts to address this: mnemonic layouts correctly reorganise to support the underlying layout, and positional layouts remain the same, no matter what the underlying layout is.

The ISIS keyboards are not currently mnemonic layouts - although they really should be. We are currently reviewing these layouts, and I can make a mnemonic version available to you for testing purposes if you wish (but it will only work with Keyman Desktop 7.0!)

Thanks for the explanation. Working with a revised ISIS layout would be a solution for devanagari. However, I will first have to search for a solution for transliteration that also works properly with Keyman six or higher.

We have at least one mnemonic layout transliteration keyboard online: Indic Roman Transliteration keyboard - this keyboard has been uploaded recently so I would be interested to hear if it works for you.

The ISIS keyboard collection also includes an Indic transliteration keyboard that has an identical layout to the Devanagari and other keyboards - so you can use the same keystrokes to type any combination. Again, the ISIS keyboards do not currently support a mnemonic layout - but we are looking into this!

I tried the Indic Roman Transliteration keyboard some time ago. It worked nicely and was easy to use. Unfortunately a visarga (h with dot under it) seemed not to be included. The visarga does also not appear on the character list. The ISIS transliteration keyboard seemed not to contain all characters needed for scientific input of Hindi or Sanskrit.