Layout editor keyboard

This is a screenshot of the keyboard for the layout editor. The keyboard is a widget which is composed of individual widgets of each key.

I did not use glade-3 for the keyboard at this time. Although it is possible to create custom widgets in Python and install them in Glade, the current distributed packages are missing something, thus it would be messy when others try to use the editor. It’s a good experience to do all by hand anyway.

When creating a layout, you drag and drop characters on the keyboard. The editor shows a table with characters though it would be possible to drag characters from gucharmap as well.

The next step is to get an intuitive UI so that when you drop a character on a key, the key expands (a popup appears) showing the available four positions to receive the character.

Permanent link to this article: https://blog.simos.info/layout-editor-keyboard/

3 comments

    • Henrik on May 7, 2010 at 11:32
    • Reply

    Hi, is work being done to bundle this editor with x.org or Linux distributions? Are there any plans on continuing the development?

  1. Hi Henrik,

    I do not plan to do development on the keyboard layout editor for the following months.
    If you would like help in getting the program to work for you, or help in starting to develop, I am happy to assist.

    The latest version of the source is available at
    http://github.com/simos/keyboardlayouteditor
    I am happy to add anyone as developer at the github project who is interested in developing the editor.

    Apart from layout editor, it is also possible to use the source code in order to create a tool that parses layout files and automatically creates a nice document guide for end-users, on how to use each layout.

    • ElStellino on August 23, 2015 at 18:30
    • Reply

    Hello Simos, I land here five years later, because I thought that I finally found what I am looking for, but I saw that sadly this project has been abandoned?
    When I was using Windows there was a free Microsoft program called Keyboard Layout Creator, very intuitive and quick to use. I proposed a similar tool many times in Linux-related forums but every Linux fanboy regularly bashes this idea because it’s better to code your own keyboard and say that Microsoft solution is counter intuitive… Well, I am a translator and try to use Linux as much as possible just because my machine runs better with it, but sometimes I am frustrated by some Linux users who are not willing to help, but they are just there to shoot at Microsoft. At this stage is the program usable? Because of my job I need to type in 4 different languages, and having some keys assigned where I want it would be the solution, rather than learning by hearth 4 different keyboard layouts… If not, are you aware of any similar tool, please?
    Thanks in advance!

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