Keyman Developer Features

Keyboard Editor

Rapidly design a keyboard layout with a drag and drop interface in the Layout editor, then add more complex rules using the Keyboard Programming Language in the integrated keyboard Source editor. Create an associated On Screen Keyboard as part of the keyboard creation process. More...

Package Editor

Bundle keyboards, fonts, documentation and more into a single file for ease of installation. Edit the package source directly in the package Source editor if desired. More...

Character Map

The dockable character map displays all ANSI or Unicode characters, along with their codes and properties, or according to a user-defined filter on the characters to display. Drag and drop directly from the character map into the Layout and Source editors.

Projects

Facilitates development by providing a clear step-by-step process for creating keyboard solutions and their accompanying packages and custom products.

Icon Editor

Create icons for keyboards and products with a straightforward visual editing interface that supports up to 256 colours and transparency.

Unicode keyboard layouts

Codepage-based keyboard layouts for legacy keyboard solutions

Multiple characters per Key

Can output multiple characters with a single keystroke.

Multiple shift-states per key

Can assign characters to keys with combinations of Shift, Ctrl and Alt.

Typewriter layout

Supports mapping keys based on their location on the physical keyboard - regardless of what physical keyboard the end user has.

Integrated Icon Editor

Create icons for keyboards with a straightforward visual editing interface that supports up to 256 colours and transparency.

Fully integrated Layout and Source editors

Design your keyboard in the Layout editor or the Source editor. Changes made in the Source editor will be reflected in the Layout editor and vice versa.

Full-featured text file editor

All the features you would expect in a text file editor - bookmarks, block selection, search and replace, and more.

Different fonts in editor for quoted text

Allows comments and string in the keyboard editor to be displayed in a different font than the remainder of the code. This helps where using a language that is not in the usual editor fonts.

Keyboard debugger

Makes finding and eliminating bugs from complex keyboards much simpler, and allows for better testing. It includes:

• Fully interactive step-by-step program tracing.
• Breakpoints: highlighting a particular rule to that you can trace a problem with that rule
• Store information: shows the stores associated with the current rule, and highlights relevant characters in the store.
• Current deadkey states: shows visually the current deadkeys.
• Call stack: shows the execution path through multiple group keyboards.

Keyboard regression testing

When creating a complex keyboard, it can be difficult sometimes to add a new rule without affecting existing rules. Regression testing allows you to automatically test your keyboard to ensure you haven't changed the behaviour in an undesired manner. You can specify tests either through XML or interactively, and save the tests for the future.

Syntax highlighting

Shows language features in different font styles for clearer editing.

Print preview and coloured syntax printing

Allows you to preview how the keyboard source will appear before printing, and also enables printing the syntax highlighting.

HTML and XML editing with syntax highlighting

Makes editing HTML and XML files simple, with the use of coloured syntax highlighting specific to each file type.

UTF-8 and UTF-16 file format support

Allows keyboard source files to contain Unicode text in comments or strings. Also can edit text files, XML files, and HTML files in UTF-8 or UTF-16 formats.

Bundle keyboards, fonts and documentation

Bundle multiple keyboards, fonts, documentation and any other files into a single installable package.

Install splash image

Allows a custom image or logo to be displayed when installing a package.

Contextual rule-based system

Keyboard rules are the core of the language. Easily specify output of characters from a keystroke based on the existing on-screen context.

Deadkey support

Powerful deadkeys can be integrated into the keyboard language. Unlike Windows keyboards, deadkeys can be contextual and are not limited to how they are combined with normal keys.

Map almost any key on the keyboard

Almost any key on the keyboard can be mapped with Virtual Keys. Only a few system keys are reserved.

Caps Lock rules

Caps Lock can be managed - for instance, allowing Shift to release, or even to enable a completely different set of rules when Caps Lock is active.

Rule Groups

Put your rules into multiple groups, enabling powerful pre-processing and post-processing of keystrokes, for example to normalise as you type.

Character classes, called 'stores'

Group your the characters used in your keyboard into 'stores' to reduce the ruleset - often turning 100 similar rules into just one.

Tutorial

Comprehensive tutorial takes you through the features of the language and enables you to become a keyboard programming expert.

Positional and Mnemonic keyboards

A positional keyboard is one that has an unvarying layout -- no matter what physical keyboard the user has, the layout will not change. A mnemonic layout, on the other hand, adapts itself to the user's layout, thus, for example, enabling phonetic input on a range of European keyboards.

Input method extensions

Allows practically unlimited extension of Keyman keyboards with custom DLLs.

Named character constants

Provides an easy, readable way to refer to Unicode characters within a keyboard file. Characters can be assigned names which allows you to avoid using their character value, making your keyboard files much clearer.

Unicode character name constants

Implements all official Unicode character names as named character constants.

Ethnologue code support

Can store the SIL Ethnologue language code(s) in the keyboard, for use by third-party applications and keyboard upload to the Tavultesoft website.

Create an On Screen Keyboard as part of the keyboard creation process.

Automatically generate an On Screen Keyboard from the keyboard layout.

Use bitmaps on key caps

Sometimes diacritic marks are not clear at small sizes. You can replace these with a bitmap image which has been edited for clarity.

Describe visual keyboard as XML

Lets you export a visual keyboard to an XML file, allowing for a standardised description of the keyboard.

Export keyboard images to HTML, PNG, BMP

Enables exporting of visual keyboards to PNG, BMP, or interactive HTML formats for documentation.

Web-based support

Email support

Telephone support