Creating a new Kikbd kimap

Received: from johnrhudson ([194.75.99.212]) by btclick.com


1 Read the Kikbd manual

What follows assumes you have done this and paid particular attention to section 9.

2 Install en.kimap and print all the lowercase characters

You will need this to check whether your keyboard uses any non-standard assignments and to learn the names assigned to each key.

You can find the names assigned to each key by printing out the relevant file in /opt/kde/share/apps/kikbd/codes/.

3 Install a couple of other kimap files and print all the characters

Make sure you print all the characters using Shift-Alt-Right, Alt-Right, Shift and unshifted; German (de.kimap) and Hungarian (hu.kimap) are recommended as these are particularly well-constructed examples.

Print out the kimaps themselves in order to find the names of each character. Since all kimaps only use a selected number of characters, you may need to print out several to find the correct name of an unusual character.

4 Decide on your changes and compare them with en.kimap

You do not need to enter any assignments for a key where you want the assignments to be the same as in the codes file. Where you make no changes to the assignment, Alt-Right produces the default key assignment. For all other assignments, plan what you will use; syntax is important;
for example,

keymap19=c,c,C will produce the same result as leaving out this assignment of the key named c

keymap19=c,c,C, will disable Alt-Right on key c

keymap17=z,y,Y will assign y to key z as in a QWERTZ keyboard

keymap17=z,y,Y,less,greater will assign y to key z and the lesser than and greater than signs to Alt-Right and Shift-Alt-Right respectively

keymap19=c,c,C,ccedilla will produce ccedilla whether c is shifted or unshifted when Alt-Right is pressed

keymap19=c,c,C,ccedilla,copyright will produce ccedilla when Alt-Right-c is pressed and the copyright sign when Shift-Alt-Right-c is pressed

5 Enter your changes in a kimap file

The easiest way is to use another kimap file as a template.

* Put your name and email address in the line Author=.

* Put a description of the kimap in Comment=.

* Put a two or three character label in Label= which matches the two or three characters you have used before the period in your file name.

* Put the country to which the kimap applies in Locale=. You can find a list of the countries supported and their flags in /opt/kde/share/kcmlocale/pics/.

* Add your changes after [Keyboard Map].

Test your kimap file either in /opt/kde/share/apps/kikbd/ or in HOME/.kde/share/apps/kikbd/.
If you choose the second option, make sure you copy over all the other kimaps you want to use as Kikbd defaults to HOME/.kde/share/apps/kikbd/ if it exists and you cannot use any of the kimaps in /opt/kde/share/apps/kikbd/.

6 Send it to ctibirna@gch.ulaval.ca

If your kimap represents a national keyboard layout which is not currently supported by Kikbd, send a copy to Cristian Tibirna, the current maintainer of Kikbd.

Search