Topic Missing dead key functionality

Finnish Basic does not contain dead key functionality that is needed for typing a large number of characters that can be typed on a normal Finnish keyboard with normal software as shipped e.g. with Windows. This applies to the dead key for the accents ´ and ` (needed to produce e.g. é and è) and the other dead key for ¨~^. This means that Finnish Basic cannot even produce the tilde ~.

The current Finnish national standard for keyboards, SFS 5966, has a much larger dead key functionality as well as added characters produced using AltGr.

As far as I can tell, ~ is available on AltGr+~ (right square bracket on US layout). Can you tell me where you are seeing this -- is it in Keyman Desktop, KeymanWeb, elsewhere?

I am aware that the Finnish national standard keyboard was updated since we released the Finnish Basic keyboard in 2008. It should be a simple enough matter to create a new version of the Finnish keyboard that follows the SFS 5966 standard using Keyman Developer.

Sorry for my confusion: it’s just the images of keys in Keyman Desktop that are the problem here. They are blank for the two dead keys that have ´` (acute accent, grave accent) and ¨~^ (dieresis, tilde, circumflex) as the engravings in physical keyboards. I jumped into conclusion that they don’t work.

Regarding SFS 5966, there’s the complication that it has a large number of dead key + normal key combinations, and as far as I can see, you cannot define them in the graphic UI in Keyman Developer. But it seems simple enough to do that in the “Code” view.

Actually I have the layout as a .klc file. I wonder if there is a conversion utility. And I wonder whether you would like to use the .klc file to set up a layout that you distribute.

I suspect the reason the keys are showing blank is that they show the combining marks, which would have shifted left off the key as they have no base character.

You can change the key cap on the On Screen Keyboard tab to a non-combining version of the character, which should resolve that.

At present we don't have a conversion tool from .klc to .kmn, although it shouldn't be that hard to write one. As it stands, we are happy to keep a copy of the .klc file in our internal repository for future conversion, if you are happy with it being distributed under the MIT license.