Topic Changing keys on Keyman

I just installed Keyman 6.0, and can't believe how easy typing Greek is! The keys are so much more intuitive than Windows' Greek Polytonic its unbelievable.

I do have one question. I'd like to change two keys--the X and C keys. Is there a way I can configure Keyman to type the Xi with the letter X, and the Chi with the letter C?

I'm glad to hear you are enjoying typing Greek with Keyman!

At present, it would not be possible for us to make the change that you are asking for -- although you can create your own keyboard layout with Keyman Developer (www.keymandeveloper.com) I suspect that this would be more work than the value you would receive from it.

I'm not sure which Greek keyboard you are using, but you could contact the author of the Greek keyboard that you are using and ask them if they'd be willing to make the change for you.

I should mention that Keyman 6.0 was released in 2002 -- we just released version 8.0 which has had significant improvements if you are interested in trying that version (http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/)

I just installed Keyman 8, and after reading that it was freeware, was told that it is a 30-day free trial.

I'd like to update, but not if I have to pay in 30 days. Can you explain which it is?

Never mind. I'll stick to 6.0. 8.0 made changes to the Windows language settings and brought back that dreaded Language toolbar, and 6.0 just worked without doing that. If my needs grow (or if 6.0 won't work on the next laptop I get), I'll work on 8.0, but for now I'm fine with 6.0.

Hi Paul,

We don't like the language bar either: we put a lot of effort into Keyman 8 to make the language bar as redundant as possible. The problem is that in order for many applications (including Word) to work correctly with Greek text, you do have to mark the text as Greek, and the only way to do this correctly is to install the Greek language. This causes the language bar to re-open.

Keyman links the Greek keyboard to the Greek language to ensure that the text is then correctly marked as Greek. In Word, for instance, this prevents simple things like AutoCorrect or spell checking messing up your Greek text, but also makes sure Word does not format text with the wrong font, or display the Greek diacritic marks incorrectly, etc.

With Keyman 8.0, you can choose to close the language bar permanently again, as Keyman provides all the functionality you need to switch languages, improving on the Windows Alt+Left Shift language switch with its own Alt+Left Shift handler, or even just using the existing Keyman hotkeys.

Where did you see the note about Keyman 8.0 being freeware? Keyman has not been freeware for many years: it does take a lot of money to develop Keyman and support it! However we do offer a TrialPay-based version of Keyman 8.0 which allows you to get Keyman free - see http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/trialpay.php for details.

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You don't have to sell me on the justification for charging for software, and obviously you have a quality product, but that phrase in the red is a bit misleading.

I agree, that sentence is confusing. The background to that is that the keyboard which was developed by Manuel Lopez is being offered as a free product, but a prerequisite for the keyboard is our software Keyman Desktop, which as you know is not free. To complicate matters, we then offer both products as a combined download which makes install technically easier but does conflate the licensing details.

We have been working on the descriptions of the hundreds of keyboards listed on our site to clarify the licensing; I'll make sure we get onto this one shortly.

OK so we've updated that keyboard description -- in this instance just removing the confusing sentence about the keyboard being now freeware seemed the most sensible solution.