Topic US and UK keyboard mappings

Hello, I am new to Keyman, but I have used MSKLC (Microsoft's Keyboard Layout Creator tool. In Windows each keyboard layout for each country/language has a different mapping of letters to phisical scancodes of the keyboard. The US layout swaps the double quote key '"' and 'at' symbol key '@' of the UK layout.

   Whenever I test a Keyman keyboard, uses the US scancode mapping.

   My Keyman header text is:

:

store(&VERSION) '9.0' store(&NAME) 'Trial 4' store(&LANGUAGE) 'x0809' store(&WINDOWSLANGUAGES) 'x0809' store(&BITMAP) 'Trial 4.ico' begin Unicode > use(main)

Please advise as to how I can stop Keyman from using the US mapping and make it use the UK mapping.

Thank you.
Julian Griffin

You can use mnemonic layouts to have the rules of your keyboard follow a different base mapping. This is not always appropriate for a given keyboard - have a read of this blog post:

http://blog.tavultesoft.com/2011/08/developing-mnemonic-layouts-for-keyman-desktop.html

The following help article has technical details:

http://help.keyman.com/developer/language/reference/mnemoniclayout

Thank you for the URLs. I've look through them and I think I will stay with the positional model.

But I solved the problem with

:

+ [SHIFT K_QUOTE] > '@' + [SHIFT K_2] > '"'

It works, but it feels like a bit of a bodge.

Regards
Julian Griffin

I've looked a little closer at the differences between the US and UK keyboard layout. The keyboard I am developing is for use on UK keyboards. The users will expect the symbols not to have moved when they switch to the TPA keyboard. So I have added to the code:

:

c Letters & symbols to make the US layout conform to the UK layout. + [SHIFT K_3] >       '£' + [SHIFT K_2] >       '"' + [K_BKSLASH] >       '#' + [CTRL ALT K_4] >    '€' + [SHIFT K_QUOTE] >   '@' + [SHIFT K_BKSLASH] > '~' + [SHIFT K_BKQUOTE] >          '¬' + [SHIFT ALT K_BKQUOTE] >      '¬' + [CTRL ALT K_BKQUOTE] >       '¦' + [CTRL ALT K_BKSLASH] >       '\' + [SHIFT K_oE2] >              '|' + [SHIFT CTRL ALT K_BKSLASH] > '|' + [SHIFT CTRL ALT K_A] > 'Á' + [SHIFT CTRL ALT K_E] > 'É' + [SHIFT CTRL ALT K_I] > 'Í' + [SHIFT CTRL ALT K_O] > 'Ó' + [SHIFT CTRL ALT K_U] > 'Ú' + [CTRL ALT K_A] > 'á' + [CTRL ALT K_E] > 'é' + [CTRL ALT K_I] > 'í' + [CTRL ALT K_O] > 'ó' + [CTRL ALT K_U] > 'ú'

   So I would make a plea that it be possible for a keyboard to be based on the keyboard layout defined in the header of a keyboard definition, eg:

:

store(&LANGUAGE) 'x0809' store(&WINDOWSLANGUAGES) 'x0809' store(&ethnologuecode)   'Eng'

   Not just on the US keyboard layout.

Regards
Julian Griffin

Thanks for the feedback; I understand the issue. I will consider the issue for future versions of Keyman Developer.