Keyman

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mcthulhu
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Languages: English (native); strong reading skills - Russian, Spanish, French, Italian, German, Serbo-Croatian, Macedonian, Bulgarian, Slovene, Farsi; fair reading skills - Polish, Czech, Dutch, Esperanto, Portuguese; beginner/rusty - Swedish, Norwegian, Danish
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Keyman

Postby mcthulhu » Wed Jul 18, 2018 5:56 pm

I'd heard of this virtual keyboard tool, which supports over 1,000 languages, before, and I think zenmonkey posted about it several years ago, but Jost Zetzsche's 16 July language technology newsletter mentioned that Keyman has since become free and open source. It's available for multiple operating systems (though the Android version supports "only" 600+ languages), and was last updated in July 2018.

The developer resources at https://keyman.com/developer/ particularly interest me. Keyman Developer 10 allows creating custom keyboard layouts for any language, and Keyman Engine allows integrating foreign language keyboard support into your own software applications. I've seen several other virtual keyboard projects on GitHub, but Keyman seems much more polished and complete, and I may try switching to this for keyboard support.
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Alina Kuimova
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Re: Keyman

Postby Alina Kuimova » Tue Aug 07, 2018 6:19 pm

Just wondering if there is a really huge difference between Keyman and any other multilingual keyboards like Gboard? The guys from Google claim that their keyboard supports around 400 languages which is certainly inferior to Keyman; but, honestly, how many people really learn the rest of the tongues?

Custom layout seems like an interesting feature, but it can be apply in the real world only with systems like Dvorak and it's multilingual implementations. But again how many percent of the world population uses DSK? For those who do, Keyman would certain make the difference, but for other people it will probably make no difference. Just a matter of taste.
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zenmonkey
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Re: Keyman

Postby zenmonkey » Tue Aug 07, 2018 9:04 pm

Very interesting, looking at the Tibetan keyboards available I may install as the current Wylie implementation by Apple is not supported on Skype or Anki very well.

Thank you.
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Doitsujin
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Re: Keyman

Postby Doitsujin » Wed Aug 08, 2018 12:31 pm

Alina Kuimova wrote:Custom layout seems like an interesting feature, but it can be apply in the real world only with systems like Dvorak and it's multilingual implementations. But again how many percent of the world population uses DSK? For those who do, Keyman would certain make the difference, but for other people it will probably make no difference. Just a matter of taste.
I haven't tested Keyman, but, AFAIK, you can also generate your own Keyboard tools with Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator 1.4.

For some languages that don't use the Latin alphabet, IME (Input Method Editors) might be more helpful than custom keyboard layouts alone. For example:

Arabic: Microsoft Maren (converts romanized Arabic to Arabic letters)

Multiple languages (e.g. Persian, Russian): Google Input Tools
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