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Ukelele
Mac OS X Keyboard Layout Editor

John Brownie, 2010-02-09; 439488 reads

Ukelele is a Unicode Keyboard Layout Editor for Mac OS X versions 10.2 and later. Version 2.0 is only for Mac OS X versions 10.4 and later.

Beginning with version 10.2 (Jaguar), Mac OS X supports an XML-based format for keyboard layouts (.keylayout files). These may be installed by copying them to the Keyboard Layouts folder within /Library or ~/Library; then they are enabled via the Input tab of the International module within System Preferences.

However, modifying keyboard layouts—let alone creating entirely new keyboard layouts, such as for a new script—by directly editing the XML text is tedious and error-prone.

Ukelele aims to simplify keyboard layout editing by providing a graphical interface to .keylayout files, where the desired characters can simply be dragged onto keys as needed. (The Character Palette, available in the Input menu if it has been enabled in System Preferences, is a great place to find the characters.)

In addition to simple assignment of single character codes to keys, Ukelele can assign multiple-character strings and can create "dead keys", where a keystroke sets a new state that modifies the output of the following keystroke.

For more information about Mac OS X keyboard layouts, as well as existing layouts available for download, see Input Resources. For some types of layout, particularly with large numbers of dead-key sequences, creating a layout with the text-based tool KeyLayoutMaker may be a useful alternative.

Latest Update

9 February 2010 — Released version 2.0b5

This is the fifth beta release of version 2.0 of Ukelele, a major rewrite which will only work on Mac OS X 10.4 and later. The previous stable version (1.8.4) is still available for download.

Modified the code to save a file, hopefully avoiding a crash.

Download

Latest release (universal binary, for Mac OS X 10.4 and later):

Ukelele 2.0b5
John Brownie, 2010-02-08
Download "Ukelele_2.0b5.dmg", Mac OS X disk image, 10MB [0 downloads]

Last stable release (universal binary, 1.8.4, 15 September 2009):

Ukelele 1.8.4
John Brownie, 2009-09-14
Download "Ukelele_1.8.4.dmg", Mac OS X disk image, 6MB [14006 downloads]

Note

Feedback about the Ukelele tool is invited (see the Read Me file for contact information). This software is provided in the hope that it may be useful, but with no warranty, expressed or implied, and with no guarantee of support or future upgrades.

History

27 January 2010 — Released version 2.0b4

Instead of a black frame on dead keys, they are now a red colour, and the selected keys (for swapping keys) are framed.
The grey for printed keys that are down has been made a little lighter.
Support for opening files which are considered to be plain text has been re-enabled. Hopefully this solves problems in opening old files, without causing problems with saving them.
Key elements with empty output should be handle correctly now.
Symbols for non-printing characters should show up on non-standard keys.

25 January 2010 — Released version 2.0b3

Key colours are now user-configurable in preferences. Key up and key down have inner and outer colours, with a gradient from the outer colour at the corners to the inner colour in the centre of the key cap.
Key colours are swapped, so that the darker colour is now in the centre of the key, the lighter at the edges.
Crashes when moving from comment to comment have been fixed.
The problem solved in 1.8.4 with hand-edited files with gaps in numbering key maps has been solved in 2.0b3 as well.
Found a more robust solution for positioning text on the key cap.
A word of explanation about removing plain text support: This was only necessary for opening some old files, and was not a supported save format. Removing support avoids saving an unusable file.

20 January 2010 — Released version 2.0b2

Solved the problem of not launching on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger).
Changed the colour of the key caps to a darker blue, to increase contrast.
Moved the text down a bit on the key cap to provide more space for diacritics. This may not work all that well for different font sizes, and I will look at a more robust solution.
Printing now uses more printer-friendly colours — black on white, with no background colour, and grey highlights on modifiers that are down.
Fixed a crash if you clicked the “Create” button on the toolbar twice in a row.
Added QWERTZ as an option for new key maps.
Experimentally removed support for plain text files. If this causes problems opening files, then let me know.
Avoided creating empty action names, a potential problem.

15 January 2010 — Released version 2.0b1

Major rewrite, based on the Nano framework, meaning that it is restricted to Mac OS X 10.4 and later, but utilising many more modern features, such as sheets and drawers.
Redesigned interface, with a toolbar window and a drawer, bringing most elements into a single window.
The keyboard window is more scalable, allowing any value between 50% and 500%, including an option to fit the keyboard to the screen.
Printing is now implemented, with options of printing the keyboard layout with all dead key states and/or all modifier combinations.
Many interactions have been reworked, using a status bar to give instructions, leading to fewer dialogs that have to be navigated.
More information is now available about code points in the info inspector palette, based on the Unicode 5.2 standard.
Combining diacritics are now shown with a placeholder character, which is configurable in the preferences.
Comment handling is much improved, now handling all comments in the file, not just those at the beginning, and allowing comments longer than 255 characters.
New icons.
Support for bundles, so that keyboard layouts can be saved as bundles, or into existing bundles, optionally grouping the keyboard layout file with an icon file (usually the flag icon).
It is now possible to capture the current keyboard input source to create a keyboard layout. This allows easier conversion of older resource-based keyboard layouts, and use of the system’s keyboard layouts (which are no longer provided as XML as of 10.5, Leopard). Note that this facility requires Rosetta on Intel-based Macs.
The manual and tutorial have been rewritten to reflect the new version of Ukelele.

15 September 2009 — Released version 1.8.4

Fixed a problem with certain keyboard layouts that had been hand-edited to have gaps in the numbering of their key maps.

8 June 2009 — Released version 1.8.3

Keyboards with a Fn key did not show the delete key as a forward delete when the Fn or Num Lock keys were down. This is fixed.
Changed the output so that, if there are no actions, no actions section is in the XML. This may fix an issue introduced by a Security Update for 10.4.11.

30 April 2009 — released version 1.8.2

Fixed a hang when deleting the last comment in a keyboard layout.
Fixed a bug which caused a crash when trying to unlink a key with no output.
Fixed a bug in saving a keyboard layout when some of the headers were not specified.

6 January 2009 — released version 1.8.1

When Sticky Modifiers is on, the modifiers are returned to their state when the window is activated (such as after a dialog is dismissed), rather than going back to the state of the hardware keyboard modifiers.
Avoid a crash when you close a keyboard layout when you are in a dead key state other than state “none”.
Avoid a crash when editing a key with no output in the current dead key state that is not state “none”.

29 July 2008 — released version 1.8

We now remove unused actions when removing unused states, which improves the behaviour, removing more states.
Fixed a bug which occasionally made Ukelele crash when editing the terminator of a dead key state by double-clicking the dead key.
Fixed a bug which caused a crash on quit after adding a new modifier combination.
Fixed a bug which caused a crash when a dead key state had no terminator specified, usually when a keyboard layout has been edited outside Ukelele.
Updated the resources list to reflect a changed URL.
Fixed a bug that caused a crash when you tried to open a file that had illegal XML.
Fixed a couple of places where strings were not properly encoded for XML, leading to a possibility of getting a file which was not legal XML, and therefore the system could not use the keyboard layout, and Ukelele could not open it again.
A malformed file could cause a crash on save. This is fixed.
When you change the script code, a random keyboard ID in the appropriate range is chosen. Also, new keyboards have a random keyboard ID.
Updated the manual to include information on the correct ranges of IDs allowed for each of the different script types. Keyboard IDs may have more influence than is implied by Apple’s documentation, but this is far from certain.
Updated the help book a little to reflect changes in the program and in terminology used in the manual.
Updated the Unicode system keyboard layouts to have all the current control keys having default output (they got missed in 1.8b6).

12 March 2008 — released version 1.8b6

Fixed a bug that made keys appear selected when the Num Lock key was down.
Corrected the behaviour of the Apple Aluminium Wireless keyboard and MacBook (Late 2007), which have a Fn key, but no embedded keypad.
Provided a better error message when a non-keyboard layout XML file is opened.
Changed the way the XML is produced to adhere to part of the original specification (the when element for state “none” must come first).
Added the current state and action names in the dialog asking for a new name.
Updated all the provided keyboard layouts, both System and Logitech, to have all control keys defined and to avoid numeric state names.
If you gave an empty string in a dialog that needed a non-empty string, you got stuck in a loop that wouldn’t accept the string until you clicked Cancel and tried again. This is now fixed.
Changed the display in dead key states so that only the output in the dead key state is shown. The previous behaviour was that keys that had only one output would show that, even if the key did not produce that output in the dead key state.
A completely rewritten manual is now included. Help files and an updated tutorial are still in progress.

6 November 2007 — released version 1.8b5

Apple has changed how the system keyboard layouts are organised, and so it is no longer possible to create a new keyboard layout based on a system keyboard layout. This option in the “New…” dialog is disabled on Leopard systems (but is still available on older systems).

5 November 2007 — released version 1.8b4

Made the default index a pop-up menu in the modifiers editor, so that you can change it there, as well as via the Keyboard menu.
Added resources to allow the new Apple aluminium keyboards (both wired and wireless) as options in the keyboard type for display.
Added support for the new function keys F17 , F18 and F19 . This produces a side effect that keyboard layouts will almost always warn that some of the control key output is missing. This is for F16 to F19 , so you should agree to add that output.
Double-clicking a control key with no output defined no longer silently adds the standard output.
Compiled under Xcode 3.0 on Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5), which hopefully makes it work on all systems from 10.2 to 10.5.
Added keyboard layouts from Logitech, converted from KCHR to uchr.

28 June 2007 — released version 1.8b3

Modified the new layout dialog to drop the “.keylayout” extension in the system keyboard layouts popup menu.
The dialog box that comes up when you double-click a key now treats the return key as clicking OK .
When you copied a key, the paste command didn’t become active immediately, but only after some other action (opening a dialog, switching windows, switching applications, or making a change to the keyboard layout). This is now fixed.
Added a new command to unlink a whole modifier set at once, which unlinks all keys with the same modifier combination.
Fixed a bug in adding a new modifier combination as a copy of an existing key map which made the keyboard layout invalid and so unusable.
Fixed the dialog so that requesting a Dvorak lower case keyboard layout for a new modifier combination actually works.
Added new options for AZERTY layouts (upper and lower case) when creating a new modifier combination.
Added a new reference to the links page of the manual, with pointers to resources for users with non-Apple keyboards (PC keyboards, if you like).

May 30, 2007: released version 1.8b2

Fixed an error in the Serbian keyboard layout.
Added keyboard flag icons for almost all the system keyboards.
Opening a keyboard layout is now somewhat faster.
The output inspector and key code floating windows now remember their position.
Made finishing a dead key an undoable action, which avoids a crash when undoing entering a dead key state when you had already left it.
Added a new command to “unlink” a key, so that editing a key’s output with one set of modifiers does not affect its output with a different set of modifiers.
Tried to fix a crash related to memory management, and also plugged a memory leak.
Fixed a typo that made the uppercase Dvorak layout created with a new modifier combination produce “e” instead of “E”.
I have begun a complete rewrite of the manual, but that isn’t ready for this release, so there is only the updates to the current manual and help.

March 13, 2007: released version 1.8b1

Universal binary, moving to Xcode.
New preferences for creating dead keys. Now, naming the dead key state and providing a terminator are optional. If you don’t provide a name, a default name will be used, and, if you don’t give a terminator, a null terminator will be created. This simplifies the creation of dead keys for most users.
Resolved a couple of places where the program could crash, including some memory management problems that could also cause memory leaks.
Fixed a bug which meant that, though technically correct, produced output that was perhaps not what Apple’s keyboard layout compiler expected. I suggest that all existing keyboard layouts be opened, a change made and then undone, and saved. This may help the system retain the correct keyboard, but I’m not sure about that.
The XML file is now indented to show structure.
New feature to swap two keys directly. This swaps everything associated with the two keys, including all modifier combinations and dead keys.
New feature of cut/copy/paste keys. As with swapping keys, this operates on all modifier combinations. Pasting is only allowed within the same keyboard layout — you can’t copy a key from one keyboard layout and paste it into another.
Provided some feedback to tell the user that a control key can’t be made into a dead key.
Updated manual and help files, and provided a tutorial.
Fixed some problems with some Central European keyboard layouts converted from Apple’s resource files: Czech, Czech-QWERTY, Estonian, Polish and Slovak. Changing some keys with the old versions caused problems with the space key, among other problems.
Removed the Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese keyboard layouts, as they are of no use — the input methods don’t allow modified keyboard layouts, unfortunately.
Improved the display in dead key states, no longer showing the terminator when there is no output in that state, but rather showing a blank key.

August 8, 2006: released version 1.7

The feature added in 1.7b6 has been extended so that an untitled keyboard will be given the name from the file name whenever it is saved, not just the first time.
Correctly handle the case of changing a control key which had no output associated with it.
Change the behaviour when deleting a dead key, so that you don’t get the terminator in states other than state “none”.
Handle characters that need to be coded for XML in the name of the keyboard.

July 8, 2006: released version 1.7b6

Added a feature to add a name for the keyboard layout when saving for the first time, if the name hasn’t been set from within the program.
There is now a new preference, for the default keyboard to display if the system does not recognise the hardware keyboard attached to the computer.
The dialog for keyboard type (the keyboard displayed on the screen) has been modified to use two popup menus rather than a list and a popup menu.
The manual and help have been updated to reflect the latest changes.
The version for OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) now has a “J” at the end of the version number.

June 23, 2006: released version 1.7b5

Fixed more (I think all, this time) cases of the random crashes introduced in 1.7b2.
Validate Unicode values input as &#x...; or &#...; to ensure that only valid Unicode code points are generated. Code points in the surrogate ranges are not permitted. If this is a problem, please tell me!
Enforce a system-level restriction that the maximum number of Unicode characters generated by a single key is 20. Attempting to make the output longer than 20 characters will result in a dialog explaining that this is not allowed.
Version 1.7b3 introduced output of named entities (e.g. ') in the keyboard layout file. These are not supported, so now numerical encoding is generated again.

June 8, 2006: released version 1.7b4

Fixed a second instance of the problem fixed in 1.7b3.

June 8, 2006: released version 1.7b3

Fixed a problem where a crash would occur some time after running the dialog from double-clicking a dead key, usually in the second time of bringing up that dialog.
Changed the code handling XML entities to produce named entities (e.g. ") rather than numerical entities (e.g. ").

May 23, 2006: released version 1.7b2

Added a new floating window, the Output Inspector, which shows the output of the key under the pointer as a Unicode code point. For dead keys, it shows the state entered by pressing the dead key, and the terminator for that state.
Added an option to the dialog when double-clicking a dead key. You can now choose to edit the dead key (i.e. enter the dead key state), as well as the previous options of changing the terminator or deleting the dead key.
Fixed a problem in handling code points outside the Basic Multilingual Plane when specified numerically.
Updated the manual more thoroughly.

May 15, 2006: released version 1.7b1

Provide some options when creating a new modifier set. The default is an empty key map, with only the control keys having any output set, but there are two new options: a standard key layout or a copy of another key map. The standard key layouts set the letter keys to the default US QWERTY or Dvorak key layouts in either upper or lower case. Copying an existing key map, for example making the caps lock initially the same as shift, is intended to save some extra work, by making you only specify what is different.
Allow navigation of bundles or packages, so that the user can open keyboard layouts that are bundled without having to manually open the bundle in the Finder and drop the keyboard layout file onto the Ukelele icon.
Updated help files and manual, including putting page numbers in the manual. Also, the references to web sites was revised, removing dead links and adding several new sites.
Fixed a bug that could cause a keyboard layout to become invalid when deleting output from a key in state “none”.
Fixed a bug introduced in version 1.6.6 which effectively disabled drag and drop when any modifiers were down, unless sticky modifiers was set.
Fixed a bug which meant that nothing was saved if the user double-clicked a key which didn’t already have output associated with it — the dialog ran, but the new output was not retained.

Notes from earlier releases can be found here.

Backlinks (20 most popular; affiliated sites and popular search engines removed)
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/14495
http://www.macupdate.com/
http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/14495
http://www.macupdate.com/dev.php?id=14495
http://www.macintouch.com/
http://www.macnn.com/
http://www.macnn.com/mobile/
http://macnn.com/rd.php?id=18023
http://www.macupdate.com/index.php?os=macosx

Add a response to this article

Note: the opinions expressed in submitted contributions below do not necessarily reflect the opinions of our website.

Reply
"Thomas-Xavier Martin", Wed, Sep 14, 2005 02:21 (CDT)
How do I build a keyboard type (physical layout) ?

Ukelele seems great, except for the fact that I can't find in its list a keyboard type that even remotely looks like what I have on my desk (Textorm small footprint USB, with French layout).

I have looked up and down and everywhere I could think of but I have found no information on how I could build/describe the physical layout of my keyboard in Ukelele (what Ukelele cals the "keyboard type".)

With so many keyboards out there (contoured, one-hand, etc.), this seems necessary.

I'd be grateful for any pointers or information on this subject.

Reply
"Jonathan Kew", Wed, Sep 14, 2005 04:33 (CDT)
Re: How do I build a keyboard type (physical layout) ?

I don't know how to add a new physical keyboard type (perhaps John can comment on whether this is feasible), but I'd expect it should be possible to use Ukelele to create layouts to work with your keyboard even though the on-screen display won't match your hardware. A little experimentation should help you determine exactly which "virtual" keys on the Ukelele screen correspond to your physical keys, and you can still re-define their output as necessary.

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Sep 14, 2005 07:06 (CDT)
Re: How do I build a keyboard type (physical layout) ?

Indeed, it's not possible to add a new hardware layout in any easy manner. Ukelele uses the KCAP resources that Apple provides as part of the system. If people really want to create their own KCAP resources, it's not too hard to add that as an option to Ukelele, but I doubt that many would relish the task!

In recent versions of Ukelele, there's a new floating window which will show you what "virtual key code" is generated when you hold down a key. Then there's the capability of editing keys by specifying the key code. It's not the easiest way to do things, but sometimes there are no hardware layouts that provide access to some of the keys on third-party hardware keyboards, and that's the best compromise I've found. The information is in the manual, but let me know if it's not clear how to do it.

Reply
"Thomas-Xavier Martin", Thu, Sep 15, 2005 05:19 (CDT) [modified by martinpk on Thu, Sep 15, 2005 06:07 (CDT)]
Re: How do I build a keyboard type (physical layout) ?

Thanks to the pointer to KCAP resources. I've looked up ways to edit or create a KCAP resource :

- ResEdit doesn't seem to have a KCAP editor, but it allows hexadecimal editing;

- Resorcerer has a bare-bones structured editor (not graphical), but the price is a little steep for a one-time use;

- The format for KCAP resources is referenced by Technical Note TE515; it is quite simple and could probably be hacked on a text editor.

http://developer.apple.com/technotes/te/te_515.html

Lacking time to seriously hack this either through a text editor or ResEdit, I will try to find the closest possible layout and work from there to get the missing keys.

Thanks to both of you for your help on this. John, thanks A LOT for Ukelele and don't worry about the manual, it seems quite clear to me.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Sep 26, 2005 04:36 (CDT)
Re: How do I build a keyboard type (physical layout) ?

If you want to create a KCAP resource, take a look at Rez, which is installed with Apple's developer tools. It enables you to write a C-like description of the resource and then compile it into the resource.

I'll add a command to an upcoming version which will allow you to open extra resource files to get access to other KCAP resources.

Reply
"Ben", Thu, Sep 3, 2009 04:10 (CDT)
Cannot find USExtended.keylayout in my system folder

I'm using Leopard 10.5.8 and have even enabled invisible files, and can't find USExtended.keylayout in the Keyboard Layouts folder. I've checked both the general system and my own user's folder.

I don't want to create a layout from scratch and I have a non-working key I'd like to remap. If someone knows what I can do, I'd really apprecieate it.

thanks

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Sep 3, 2009 15:38 (CDT)
Re: Cannot find USExtended.keylayout in my system folder

That's because the keyboard layout files included with Leopard are in a different format.

To create a keyboard layout based on one of the older system layouts, use one of the ones that are included on the disk image with Ukelele. All the system keyboard layouts from Mac OS X 10.4.11 are there. Just use "New..." and choose "Copy of other keyboard layout" in the dialog, and then choose a keyboard layout from one of the folders supplied with Ukelele.

Reply
"Benjamin Maloway", Wed, Sep 30, 2009 04:25 (CDT)
Re: Cannot find USExtended.keylayout in my system folder

Thank you.

The problem now is that I'm trying to swap or re-assign key values to navigational keys. My back arrow key is broken and I wanted to re-assign the back function to the page up key (which I never use anyway).

To do this, I simply double clicked the page up button and pasted the back arrow key code into it's field. However, after logging out and choosing my new keyboard layout, the page key has not been changed to the back arrow.

Is it not possible to re-assign navigational keys like this?

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Oct 5, 2009 20:04 (CDT)
Re: Cannot find USExtended.keylayout in my system folder

Firstly, it doesn't work with all applications to change the arrow keys. Some, including some of Apple's own applications, look at the key code rather than the assigned output of the key.

Second, if you have a keyboard layout that is active, modify it (in Ukelele or any other way), save it, then log out and log in again, the system will not load the new version. You need to modify the folder that contains the keyboard layout to get the system to recognise the change. The easiest way is to drag the keyboard layout file to the desktop and then back to the Keyboard Layouts folder, then log out and log in again. Restarting will always load the newest version of a keyboard layout.

Reply
"the dude", Thu, Oct 20, 2005 08:20 (CDT)
distinguish between right and left COMMAND key

great program, unfortunately it is not possible to have an additional modifier key by distinguishing between left and right command key... anybody knows whether this is possible at all? i can understand that it is not possible for caps lock (as i never have seen a keyboard with two caps lock keys), but for the command key it 'd be great (all keyboards have two of them)... what a waste of keys... would be very helpful to create a real german keyboard layout (identical with windoze layout), as i use the option key for emacs and i don't want to lose it.

Reply
"Jonathan", Sat, Oct 22, 2005 14:15 (CDT) [modified by jonathan on Sat, Oct 22, 2005 14:17 (CDT)]
Re: distinguish between right and left COMMAND key

I checked the specification for the XML "keylayout" file format (see Tech Note 2056), and it does not provide for separately recognizing the left and right command keys. So there's nothing Ukelele can do about this.

Reply
"the dude", Thu, Oct 27, 2005 03:37 (CDT)
Re: distinguish between right and left COMMAND key

now that 's what i 'd call a perfect answer, thanks :-)... too bad that it 's not possible, but as there is a left/right OPTION key, i'll take one of these. it 's not perfect (especially for an emacs freak like me), but very close to (i'm suffering from perfectionism, you know). btw, somewhere else i read that my first-generation 17" pb uses the same keycode for either command key, so i could have used it only if an external usb (or maybe also bluetooth) keyboard is attached.

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Nov 30, 2005 21:57 (CST)
Re: distinguish between right and left COMMAND key

Left and right shift, option and control keys can be used as far as Ukelele and the keyboard format go. However, very few hardware keyboards actually generate different key codes for the left and right keys, and not all have two option keys. Most keyboards that you can use map the left and right modifiers to the left modifier.

Reply
"Andi", Fri, Nov 4, 2005 00:32 (CST)
Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

Since some of my arrow keys are broken, I'd like to remap some key combos (like command-.) to the arrow keys. But if I understand correctly, the keylayout mechanism only handles characters, but not things like arrow keys. Is there some other method to remap some keys to the arrow keys?

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Nov 30, 2005 21:52 (CST) [modified by jonathan on Fri, Dec 2, 2005 09:25 (CST)]
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

You can make other keys behave as arrow keys. I would suggest that you double-click one of the arrow keys and see the "standard output" for that key. It will be something like "&#x001e;" which is the XML way to designate hex output. Next, double-click the key that you would like to be an arrow key, and put the appropriate output there.

Up arrow is &#x001e;

Down arrow is &#x001f;

Left arrow is &#x001c;

Right arrow is &#x001d;

Reply
"", Sat, Jul 1, 2006 16:36 (CDT)
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

This doesn't work for me.

I do exactly this:

Copy the hex output onto the new key I want to use, ie. "e".

Save the file, install in Keyboard Layouts folder.

Log out, log in, change to the new keylayout

But now when I push "e" nothing happens. It does not mirror the functionality of the up arrow. The up arrow still works as always but the "e" key doesn't do it.

I'm running Tiger on an Intel MacBook, and using a wireless Microsoft keyboard.

Do you have any idea what i'm doing wrong?

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jul 7, 2006 03:47 (CDT)
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

It appears that most Cocoa applications, and many Carbon applications, don't behave as expected with this sort of change. They are actually looking at the virtual key code to determine whether a key is an arrow key rather than the output. A few applications do work properly, such as TextWrangler or File Buddy, but they appear to be a minority, unfortunately. I have filed a bug with Apple, and we will see what happens.

Reply
"pd", Thu, Nov 9, 2006 22:17 (CST)
Re: arrow keys

Man, that's really too bad. My down arrow key has stopped working, and it's really annoying. I had high hopes for being able to remap it with a keyboard layout. :)

Reply
"Yakov", Sun, Mar 25, 2007 02:33 (CDT)
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

Lithuanian Language Characters, please!

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Mar 28, 2007 07:43 (CDT)
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

> Lithuanian Language Characters, please!

There is a Lithuanian keyboard layout available in the System Keyboards folder, in the CentralEuropean folder. Note that it is not a Unicode keyboard layout, but that can easily be changed, by changing the keyboard ID (Keyboard menu, Set Keyboard ID...) to a negative value and setting the Keyboard Script to Unicode (both things are in the same dialog box).

Reply
"simonas", Thu, Jun 21, 2007 06:20 (CDT)
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

When I look into /System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/Central European.bundle and/or ~/Contents, I find no *.keylayout

What file do I open with Ukelele?

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Jun 21, 2007 10:50 (CDT)
Re: Mapping arbitrary keys to non-character keys

The keyboard layouts in the Central European bundle aren't the XML format that Ukelele edits. On the install disk image for Ukelele, you can find XML versions of these in the System Keyboards folder.

Reply
"Chris", Fri, Jan 27, 2006 02:07 (CST)
Multimedia PS/2 Keyboard

I have connected a multimedia PS/2 keyboard to my mac via a USB convertor. All the basic keys work, but this keyboard has a number of extra 'multimedia' keys which I wish to resurrect and maybe even use them as short cut keys to other apps.

Will Eukalele help me with my query? If not, any other ideas to what I can do?

Kindest regards,

Chris

Reply
"Apan", Mon, Jan 30, 2006 09:08 (CST)
Some keys...

Hello, this is such a wonderful program. I am swedish, but love the US layout because of the natural placement of / [] {} etc when coding. Then, ofcourse, I lack swedish keys. I just took the US layout and added swedish keys with OPTION and SHIFT+OPTION pressed :)

I have two questions,

1. How can I find out more hex-codes for things like UP, DOWN, BACKSPACE, PGUP etc? Is there a list somewhere?

2. I have a logitech USB keyboard with multimedia keys, pause, scroll lock, F12 etc, but none of these keys give me a keycode when showing key codes. However, pressing the MUTE multimedia button corretly tells MAC OS X to mute the computer (shows fancy graphics) and F12 correctly ejects the CD. Why doesn't ukelele show me the key codes, but mac os x properly reacts? And how can I change the behaviour of these keys?

Thanks,

Apan

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Feb 1, 2006 18:50 (CST)
Re: Some keys...

1. How can I find out more hex-codes for things like UP, DOWN, BACKSPACE, PGUP etc? Is there a list somewhere?

The easiest way is to pick a keyboard type that has these keys (Keyboard menu, Set Keyboard Type...), and double-click one of those keys. A dialog box will appear which will tell you the "standard output" of that key, such as  for the up arrow. You can then enter that for whatever key you want.

Unfortunately, these keys get trapped by the operating system before applications even see them. On a PowerBook keyboard, for instance, the function keys aren't seen by applications unless the Fn key is down, but the ExposÃ© keys don't come through to applications at all. Ukelele can only help with keys that applications can see.

Reply
"Fred Jones", Tue, Jan 31, 2006 11:02 (CST)
Problem with command-T

Hi,

I'm working with several Ukelele keyboards. To both keyboards I've added modifiers for Caps Lock down and Caps Lock down + Shift down. With these two addtions I'm now able to have primary and shifted characters for another language.

The problem I'm having now is when I have TextEdit open, and press command-T for the font dialog, the TextEdit program minimizes. I based these keyboards on the 'US Extended' when I created them. I'm working on a Powerbook and have changed the keyboard type to 'Powerbook 2nd command key'.

How do I troubleshoot this problem to find out what I've done wrong?

Thanks,

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Feb 1, 2006 19:13 (CST)
Re: Problem with command-T

Firstly, the keyboard type only affects how the window looks inside Ukelele. It doesn't change how the keyboard layout works.

As to the problem, I don't really know what is happening. All I can suggest is that one of the following might have happened:

- you assigned m to the t key when the command key is down

- somehow you have managed to change the shortcut for minimize from command-m to command-t, perhaps with another application that allows remapping keyboard shortcuts.

Does it happen just in TextEdit, or in all programs?

Reply
"Fred Jones", Thu, Feb 2, 2006 12:04 (CST)
Re: Problem with command-T

Hi John,

I think you're right on the first idea. I was trying to develop a new 'touch type' keyboard that placed the new language characters in an alphabetic sequence beginning with the tilde key. Since I was using a keyboard printed in the standard QWERTY format, I forgot that the 'T' key was no longer a valid key and that the position that 'T' would normally occupy was replaced by an 'm". I guess, in the back of my mind, I forgot about the implications associated with menu commands. I'll have to re-think the touch-type key idea.

Thanks,

Reply
"Fred Jones", Tue, Jan 31, 2006 22:12 (CST)
Keyboard refresh

Hi,

Is there any way to 'refresh' the keyboard listing in the international palette other than rebooting the workstation?

Thanks,

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Feb 1, 2006 18:11 (CST)
Re: Keyboard refresh

Yes, you only need to log out and log in again. A reboot is not required.

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Jul 6, 2006 20:23 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard refresh

Further light on this issue:

When you log out and log in, the system checks the modification date of the Keyboard Layouts folder, and only reloads the keyboard layouts if the folder has changed. So, when editing a keyboard that is already in the Keyboard Layouts folder, move the file out of the folder and back in, then log out and log in. This should make the system load the new version of your keyboard layout.

Reply
"jondh", Tue, Sep 5, 2006 14:49 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard refresh

I have a new polytonic greek keyboard layout that I saved to keyboard layouts folder of my library, but it will still not show up among the available options on the international panel when I log out and log back in. I have tried saving it under a different name, rechecking the file extension (.keylayout), and — as you suggested — moving it from the folder and back in again before logging in and logging out. Have I done something to the keyboard while mapping to make OS 10.4.7 not want to recognize it?

Reply
"Mitch", Thu, Sep 14, 2006 18:18 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard refresh

I am having this same issue as well, and am also on 10.4.7.

Reply
"Tyler", Wed, Apr 18, 2007 05:51 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard refresh

I am also having this same problem. Has anyone found a solution? VERY FRUSTRATING to spend time editing a layout that I can't even use. :@

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Apr 20, 2007 07:02 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard refresh

If your keyboard layout doesn't show up at all, even after a reboot, it may be that something has made it invalid somehow. Please send me a copy of the keyboard layout (compressed with zip, StuffIt, or something like that), and I can try to diagnose the problem and see if there's a bug causing it. Just mail it to john_brownie@sil.org.

Reply
"", Tue, Sep 30, 2008 19:10 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard refresh

I had my keyboard layout show in grey (non-selectable). I changed it from Unicode to Roman, and it was finally selectable. Maybe it is your case, too.

Reply
"Fred Jones", Wed, Feb 15, 2006 22:32 (CST) [modified by jonathan on Thu, Feb 16, 2006 05:00 (CST)]
Combining grapheme joiner

Hi,

I want to enter multiple unicode characters into a single keyboard key. I need to enter the unicode codepoint, but I've only been able to enter a single codepoint using the example in the docs...

&#x02B7;

What I want to be able to enter are the codepoint U+034F and U+02B7. Since 034F is an 'invisible' mark, I don't know if it is actually there if I drag from the character palette.

When I try Í�&#x034F;&#x02B7;

I tried leaving out the second ampersand and pound...but haven't found a combination that works for multiple characters.

Thanks for your ideas.

Reply
"Jonathan", Thu, Feb 16, 2006 04:55 (CST)
Re: Combining grapheme joiner

I'm not sure about dragging characters from the palette; when I tried just now, the dialog box for multi-character key output didn't seem to accept them. But you can double-click characters in the Character Palette to insert them at the cursor position in the dialog.

Yes, it's hard to see if an invisible character such as CGJ is present! But you can detect that there's something there by using the arrow keys to move the insertion point through the text.

More generally, I'm curious why you'd want to include CGJ in the key output; it's hard to think of a reason it would be needed before a "modifier letter" like this. But that's a question you might want to discuss on the Unicode list or something like that--how best to encode the kind of data you're dealing with.

Reply
"Carly", Fri, Dec 15, 2006 21:20 (CST)
Re: Combining grapheme joiner

I'd actually like to be able to do this same thing for Russian. At the beginning levels of teaching Russian as a second language, stress marks are used over the vowels. Since stressed Russian vowels are not pre-compossed characters in the Unicode charts, I'd like to use one key (or key combo) to input the Russian vowel plus U+0301 (non-spacing accent). I've done this using the MS Keyboard Creator for Windows and would now like to make a Mac equivalent.

Any additional thoughts would be helpful

Reply
"Peter Hugosson-Miller", Thu, Feb 16, 2006 11:40 (CST)
Swedish Keyboard

Like a previous poster, I too am Swedish. Unlike him, I prefer the standard Swedish keyboard layout which I have got used to over the last 25 years or so (programming in Windoze and Linux).

I am new to the world of Mac, and I have been very frustrated with the Mac-specific Swedish keymap (called "SWE") that doesn't map to a standard Swedish keyboard. I recently bought a new Logitech Cordless Comfort Duo (which even came with a bold "Built for Mac OS X" sticker on the box), and with it came an installation CD with a keymap, called "SWE PRO".

The trouble is that neither the Mac-provided "SWE" nor the Logitech-provided "SWE PRO", map correctly to the physical layout of the keys on the keyboard. Trying to solve that problem has brought me here, and I had great hopes that Ukelele might be able to help. However, the keyboard pictures that Ukelele provides do not include the standard Swedish keyboard either, only the Mac version (which has much fewer keys on it), so I am unsure how to proceed from here.

I looked around in the Ukelele application for a way to modify the keyboard picture, but was unable to find one. For your reference, the standard Swedish keyboard layout can be seen in this series of photographs: http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_all.png http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_left.png http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_right.png http://ign.arcanel.se/images/LogitechCCD_num.png .

I hope you can help, as I won't be able to use the computer for programming otherwise. I find the lack of {|\} very frustrating indeed!

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Feb 16, 2006 18:00 (CST)
Re: Swedish Keyboard

To get more keyboard "pictures", try the "Set Keyboard Type..." item in the Keyboard menu. Since Apple supplies layouts for Apple hardware, none will match the Logitech keyboard. However, you should probably be able to find one that has most of the keys that you want. For example the USB Pro keyboard, ISO version, seems to have most of the keys, though not in exactly the same layout. Note that the keyboard type on screen has no effect on the keyboard layout itself - it's just a matter of convenience in editing the keyboard layout.

You might want to start from the Swedish Pro layout that's included with Ukelele and make whatever changes you want from there. Note that it's a MacRoman keyboard layout, so you will need to change it to Unicode (via Set Keyboard ID...) if you want to generate non-Roman characters.

Reply
"Fred Christian", Thu, Mar 2, 2006 22:31 (CST)
Problem editing a Korean keylayout

Thanks so much for the great program. I am using it to create a custom Korean Keylayout. I have ran into a problem within the Korean Hangul Input Method that I don't experience while doing test keylayouts in the standard list.

A little side note: To type Korean, you have to use the Hangul Input Method, so that it will assemble individual letters into a symbol that combines two or three letters into one syllable.

I am using OSX 10.4.5 - The problem I am having is that I can not figure out how to consistently get my edits of the keylayout file to become effective or accepted by the OS. I try rebooting, changing the permissions of the files, changing the ID of the file back and forth, rebooting, changing the name of the keylayout file back and forth, rebooting, basically all kinds of just strange things to get the new edits to take. Eventually they do, but some times it takes me hours, and I haven't figured out the pattern. When I create a standard .keylayout everything works fine, my edits take effect immediately or after a log out/log in.

I found the .keylayout file here:

/System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/HangulIMKeyboardLayouts.bundle/Contents/Resources/HNCRomaja.keylayout

And I copied the whole "HangulIMKeyboardLayouts.bundle"

to here

/Library/Keyboard Layouts/HangulIMKeyboardLayouts.bundle/

I edit the HNCRomaja.keylayout file in one/the other/ or both locations, while doing all the other tricks.

Has anyone ever experienced this? solved it? want to get paid to solve this for me? Seriously, I we be happy to donate to the cause.

Thanks

Fred

PS. the .keylayout would prove to be very useful to anyone that has learned the English keyboard and wants to type Korean, and I would be happy to share it. fredc (at) gloryofgod (dot) com

Reply
"Merle", Sat, Mar 11, 2006 09:45 (CST)
using Ukelele to remap the numeric keypad?

Probably it's just a user error, but I'm having trouble remapping keys on the numeric keypad so they do what they would on a Wintel box if NumLock is off.

In other words, I want to remap (say) numeric "7" to the "home" key. I double-click on the "7" key, and type in the scancode for the "home" key (115?)... yet it remains unmapped, even after a restart.

Is there something special I have to do to map a key to a "magic" key (like home, arrows, etc)?

Thanks!

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Apr 24, 2006 20:17 (CDT)
Re: using Ukelele to remap the numeric keypad?

To get the navigation, you need to supply the correct output for the key, which has to be in hexadecimal encoding, and it's not obvious, unfortunately. The format for the output is like:

&#x0001;

That is an ampersand followed by a hash, an x, three zeros and a one, and a semicolon.

The key codes that you need are:

Home: 0001

Enter: 0003

End: 0004

Help: 0005

Delete: 0008

Tab: 0009

Page up: 000b

Page down: 000c

Return: 000d

Escape: 001b

Clear: 001b

Left arrow: 001c

Right arrow: 001d

Up arrow: 001e

Down arrow: 001f

Forward delete: 007f

Hopefully this will work for you.

Reply
"Joe", Tue, Mar 14, 2006 01:23 (CST)
Application compatability issues

I love this app! I've been using an older iMac keyboard (cosmo). My only gripes with this kb are the lack of "end" and "delete" keys. I managed to remap the "num lock/clear" to be "delete" and the "help" and "home" keys to "home" and "end" respectively.

Interestingly the remapping doesn't work in iChat, Safari or Mail, but it does work in the Finder and Photoshop Elements. "Use one input source in all documents" is also checked.

Software versions:

System: 10.4.5

Safari: 2.0.3 (417.8)

iChat: 3.1.4 (v432)

Mail: 2.0.7 (746.2)

Any ideas?

Reply
"Windsor Productions", Tue, Apr 4, 2006 05:26 (CDT)
How to activate the space bar

Does anyone know how to activate the space bar? I can type my newly generated unicode font, but the space bar doesn't work!

Thanks.

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Apr 4, 2006 05:32 (CDT)
Re: How to activate the space bar

Not sure whether you're talking about a keyboard problem or a font problem here.

If you use a standard keyboard with your "newly generated Unicode font", does the space work? If not, I'd guess that the space character in your font is missing or zero-width.

If the problem only occurs with a custom keyboard layout, then I'd guess that you forgot to assign the space character (decimal 32, or hex 20) to the spacebar key, and so it's not generating anything when pressed.

Reply
"Windsor Productions", Tue, Apr 4, 2006 16:32 (CDT)
Re: How to activate the space bar

I have checked my font, with FontLab, and the space bar is generated, and it's not with zero width. In fact I made a test text with the Text Editor, and tried to type something by using the U.S. keyboard, and the space worked!

When I check the for the space bar in the Show Character Palette, I can't see the space bar, actually I don't know where it is, if it's there.

I appreciate your help. Any suggestions are welcomed.

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Apr 11, 2006 14:36 (CDT)
Re: How to activate the space bar

Space is character 32 (0020 in hexadecimal); in the Character Palette, it'll be the blank character immediately before the exclamation mark. (If you select that position, the Character Info section should confirm that it is the SPACE character.) You need to assign this character to the spacebar key in order for it to work.

(If you start with a copy of an existing layout, it would normally be there already, but if you start from a blank layout, it's truly blank!)

Reply
"thomas", Tue, Apr 11, 2006 13:36 (CDT)
modified unicode keyboard - chars not displayed in different fonts and applications

Hi,

I have created a customized unicode keyboard layout with german basic layout and polish characters supplied with the "Alt" key with ukelele. I activated the layout and was able to type in most of the OSx applications BUT only with fonts Times New Roman and Arial. When I switched to a differnet font and typed normal chars they were displayed in the font style selected. When I typed the Polish characters defined via ALT + A for example, these chars were displayed in TimesNew Roman, not in the selected font e.g. comic mt...

this was the case in ms office apps as well as in Apple Mail or other apps.

Please help me out. I need a functional basic German keyboard layout with aditional keys defined under ALT+ somewthat. How can I get this stuff working, maybe without using Unicode? Do I have to modify the generic .RSC files with ResEdit, and does somebody have an Idea how to do this.

Basically I need German keyboard with the mentioned addition of some polish keystrokes.

Many thanks in advance

thomas

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Apr 11, 2006 14:29 (CDT)
Re: modified unicode keyboard - chars not displayed in different fonts and applications

It sounds as if your keyboard layout is working fine, otherwise the Polish characters would never appear in any application or font you where you try it.

Your problem is most likely that some fonts do not include these characters. If you type a character that the current font doesn't support, many applications will automatically substitute a different font; they figure it is more helpful to show the right character from the wrong font than to show nothing at all (or an empty box or other error indication).

Try a font such as Lucida Grande, or Gentium, Charis SIL, and Doulos SIL, all of which have extensive support for the extended Latin characters in Unicode. Many common fonts support only Western European characters, unfortunately.

Reply
"darek", Thu, Feb 22, 2007 05:39 (CST)
Re: modified unicode keyboard - chars not displayed in different fonts and applications

All TTF fonts from Windows have full set of Polish characters

Darek

Reply
"Julka", Mon, Apr 17, 2006 11:10 (CDT)
keyboard icon

i had to change slovenian keyboard. Everything is OK, but how can i get slovenian flag as icon and not this default icon (grey keyboard)

Reply
jonathan, Mon, Apr 17, 2006 11:46 (CDT) [modified by jonathan on Mon, Apr 17, 2006 11:47 (CDT)]
Re: keyboard icon

To associate an icon with a keyboard layout, you need to create an icon and save it in the same folder as the keyboard layout file. The file name must be the same as the keyboard layout file name, with the ".keylayout" extension replaced by ".icns". So, if the keyboard layout is in the file "US Extended.keylayout", the icon would have to be in the file "US Extended.icns".

Apple provides a simple icon editor called "Icon Composer" as part of the Xcode tools package.

(Information taken from page "Creating new keyboard layouts" in Ukelele Help.)

Reply
"Larousse", Sun, Mar 18, 2007 06:59 (CDT)
Re: keyboard icon

The instructions for associating an .icns file with a keyboard layout file do not work for me. The .icns file I am using is a valid file, it is in the same folder as the .keylayout file, and has the same basename, i.e. [name of keyboard file].icns. Logged out and back in. Nothing. Am I missing something? Any other steps nececessary?

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, May 30, 2007 06:06 (CDT)
Re: keyboard icon

"The instructions for associating an .icns file with a keyboard layout file do not work for me. The .icns file I am using is a valid file, it is in the same folder as the .keylayout file, and has the same basename, i.e. [name of keyboard file].icns. Logged out and back in. Nothing. Am I missing something? Any other steps nececessary?"

The problem may well be that the file is not of the correct type. You can't just take a graphics file (JPEG, TIFF, etc) and change the extension. It has to be in the "icns" format. You can use the Icon Composer program supplied by Apple, which is installed with Developer Tools to convert a graphics file to the icns format.

Reply
"bryan", Thu, May 11, 2006 15:45 (CDT)
german macbook pro layout

hi,

i'm using a german macbook pro and have been slowly losing my sanity trying to deal with the need to type a few specific characters from convenient keystroke combinations.

does anyone no where to find the german macbook keyboard layout to use as a starting point for modification?

many, many and very sincere thanks for any feedback!

regards,

bryan

Reply
jonathan, Fri, May 12, 2006 10:30 (CDT) [modified by jonathan on Fri, May 12, 2006 10:33 (CDT)]
Re: german macbook pro layout

There's a German.keylayout file included in the Ukelele disk image, in the System Keyboards / Roman folder.

I don't have access to a MacBook (and especially not a German one) so cannot check whether it ships with slightly different layouts, but I would expect this to be a close starting point, at least.

Reply
"bryan", Fri, May 12, 2006 14:41 (CDT)
Re: german macbook pro layout

thank you so much for the simple and direct help

I feel very, very dim for not finding the German layout sooner, but it worked flawlessly and I am now humming away with a slightly modified version and woa... what a productivity boost

regards,

brzan (now I have to unlearn qwertz for a few dazs...) :)

Reply
"Nicholas Allott", Tue, May 16, 2006 12:01 (CDT)
Input menu won't update

Thanks for the application. It works well.

But I have a problem with the Input Menu tab of my International Preferences — it doesn't update properly when I log out and in. There's still a keyboard layout in there that I deleted months ago.

Also when I edit a keyboard layout the changes show up fine in Ukelele but never seem to get applied to the way the keyboard layout actually works - after relauncing applications, opening and closing the preference pane, logging out and in and restarting. Nothing makes any difference.

It is as though an old state of keyboard layouts is stored somewhere in a file that the OS draws on. Any idea how to fix this?

Reply
"Adam", Tue, May 30, 2006 10:48 (CDT)
Caps Lock => Escape?

Is it possible to bind the caps lock to an escape? I've searched high and low and can't find a way to do this.

Reply
jonathan, Tue, May 30, 2006 11:16 (CDT)
Re: Caps Lock => Escape?

I don't think so. "Modifier" keys (shift, control, option, command, caps-lock) are handled in a fundamentally different way from the "character" keys that actually generate keystroke events. Turning a modifier into a character key would require some other kind of low-level hacking, not merely a different keyboard layout resource. While anything is possible in theory — just a small matter of programming! — I am not aware of any documented or supported way to approach this.

Reply
"Steve Hyde", Sun, Jun 11, 2006 17:43 (CDT)
Input source changes by itself

Hi,

Like most other people here, I think that Ukelele is a great app which helps me work in English and German more or less simultaneously.

I don't know if this problem is related to Ukelele or if it's a more general OS X problem.

I now have three input sources on my menu bar: UK English, German and my Ukelele defined keyboard.

The input method just seems to change of it's own volition. At first, I thought this was happening when I used Cmd Tab to switch between apps. I use Ctrl Alt Space to select the next input source and Ctrl C was set to "previous". I first selected "use one input source in all documents" but still had the problem. I then disabled Ctrl C as "Previous Source" as I thought I might have been hitting the combo inadvertantly, but I'm still getting the problem. There is no way that I am hitting Ctrl Alt Space inadvertantly - certainly not as often as the input source changes.

Any ideas?

Best regards,

Steve

G4 Powerbook, OSX 10.4.6

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Jun 12, 2006 03:38 (CDT)
Re: Input source changes by itself

It may be that you are switching to a program that doesn't support Unicode. Such programs will switch the input to a non-Unicode method.

Apart from that possibility, I don't know what else would be causing this.

Reply
jonathan, Mon, Jun 12, 2006 04:04 (CDT)
Re: Input source changes by itself

I don't think this is related to Ukelele, which just creates layout files; it doesn't have any effect on the runtime process of choosing/switching between them.

I've experienced similar annoying behavior, and never really gotten to the bottom of it, but I suspect maybe some applications maintain their own record of the current layout (per app or even per window), and "helpfully" restore it when they choose — not necessarily respecting the System Preferences setting to use a single source across all documents.

If you can identify specific situations/applications where it happens, it might be worth reporting a bug to the application vendors.

Reply
"Erno Kaikkonen", Wed, Oct 18, 2006 05:49 (CDT)
Re: Input source changes by itself

I have this exact same problem. I have created a custom keyboard layout, based on the US layout, but which also has the Finnish special characters included under alt and shift+alt.

I select my custom layout, open a new tab in Opera, and the layout switches back to Finnish. The same happens when I switch between tabs. Or if I switch from Safari to Opera and back.

I tried to leave my custom layout as the only one that is checked in the Input Menu, but the OS wont let me do this; I can have, for example, the custom layout and the Finnish layout selected, but the Finnish one will be grayed out so I can't un-select it.

So, I'd appreciate if someone came up with a way to either

1) remove all the other layouts in the Input Menu except my custom layout or

2) make it stop! changing the layout by itself.

OS X 10.4.8 on a MacBook

Opera 9.02

Reply
"", Thu, Oct 26, 2006 16:29 (CDT)
Re: Input source changes by itself

I've got the same problem with a custom keyboard layout called "Neo". Everytime I switch to Photoshop or to Opera the settings get reset either to German. In Opera this also happens when I create a new tab. Terribly annoying. If anybody could help with this problem I'd be very glad.

Reply
"Scott Lees", Mon, Feb 5, 2007 09:38 (CST)
Re: Input source changes by itself

Yup, same problem here.. with opera, like one of the other posters mentioned - New Tab causes keyboard layout to switch back to British (this is a normal british usb keyboard, not an apple one: do apple keyboards have keys in american locations or what?)..

has anyone come up with a solution for this yet? it's tremendously annoying

Reply
"Felix", Wed, May 23, 2007 06:57 (CDT)
Re: Input source changes by itself

It have to pick this up again.

It  does not seem possible to actually USE a customized layout, because it switches back to the default one all the time (especially in opera)

Is there a possibility to make a customized keyboard layout wich behaves like one of the apple-layouts?

If so, it would be possible to make the customized layout the default one.

Or can it exchange an original layout with my new one?

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, May 30, 2007 06:21 (CDT)
Re: Input source changes by itself

"It  does not seem possible to actually USE a customized layout, because it switches back to the default one all the time (especially in opera)

Is there a possibility to make a customized keyboard layout wich behaves like one of the apple-layouts?"

A change made in the current beta of version 1.8 seems to have helped with NeoOffice, and possibly may help with Opera. I haven't tried Opera myself, so I can't say for sure. Anyway, it's worth a try: with the current beta, open the keyboard layout, make a change, undo it, and save. Then move the keyboard layout out of the Keyboard Layouts folder, put it back in, and then log out and log in again. See if it makes a difference.

If there's no difference, I am at a loss. It comes down to Apple's problem, or Opera's, I would think, since the keyboard layouts produced by the current version (1.8b1) are exactly the same format as Apple's layouts.

Reply
"Ahmad Sahar", Sat, Jun 24, 2006 02:46 (CDT)
Thank you

Dear Mr. Brownie,

Thank you for creating Ukelele, after four years, finally i have a tool to create a Malaysian Jawi keyboard layout. Together with the Lateef and Scheherazade fonts, it makes TextEdit a great Jawi editing system.

I would like to send it to SIL so that others who need Malaysian Jawi can use it. Is this possible?

Please feel free to contact me at shah at mac dot com.

Reply
jonathan, Sat, Jun 24, 2006 04:07 (CDT)
Re: Thank you

Thanks for your message; glad to be of service!

For any interested users, Mr Sahar's "Jawi Kit" for Mac OS X (providing both fonts and keyboard layout) can be downloaded from his site: http://homepage.mac.com/shah/Personal/FileSharing5.html.

Reply
"Jamie", Sat, Jul 15, 2006 19:19 (CDT)
Left / Right Control Key

Hello,

Is there any way I can see for sure of my keyboard has seperate Left and Righ Control / Alt keys (it is a Windows spec. keyboard).

I realise that you say most are not seperate - but I would like to find out for sure :o)

Jamie.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jul 21, 2006 02:55 (CDT)
Re: Left / Right Control Key

The simplest way is to create a keyboard layout that has different key maps for left and right control (or option? Alt usually maps to option) keys, then see what happens when you press those keys in Ukelele. If you get the different key maps showing up, then your keyboard supports left and right keys.

Reply
"tba03", Wed, Jul 19, 2006 03:31 (CDT) [modified by jonathan on Wed, Jul 19, 2006 03:35 (CDT)]
firefox

i mapped the space bar to the key just right of it on a powerbook keyboard

its working in every app EXCEPT firefox

why?

(using macosx10.2.8, firefox1.5.0.4)

Reply
"tba03", Wed, Jul 19, 2006 22:40 (CDT)
Re: firefox

update:

it seems firefox sees the layout as this key used to send "enter" and its doing nothing now(in any kind of text input in wabpage and also the search and adress bars)

BTW,the space bar is dead,thats why I remap it;)

Reply
"quoquo", Tue, Mar 11, 2008 14:02 (CDT)
Re: firefox

i have the exact same problem.

couldn't find anything in about:config either.

i guess cmd v will have to do until i get this fixed.

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Mar 12, 2008 19:46 (CDT)
Re: firefox

Quite a few programs expect that the control keys (those that don't normally produce letters, digits or symbols) will behave the same way on all keyboard layouts, and so they respond to the key code rather than the output the keyboard layout produces. So in this case, the enter key will always be treated as an enter key.

For programs like this (and there are many) you will need to have a regular key produce a space. Pick a key that you use rarely and make it the space key. You can rearrange perhaps the option key combinations to put whatever you are displacing to make the space key.

Reply
"ta5ae", Tue, Oct 13, 2009 18:51 (CDT)
Re: firefox

Vote for this to be fixed in Mozilla products like Thunderbird and Firefox -

http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla/topics/firefox_ignores_mac_os_x_remapped_keybindings_for_control_keys

Reply
"walli", Wed, Jul 19, 2006 17:40 (CDT)
input source change in Safari

I have a problem similar to the one of Steve Hyde a few posts up. I have created my own keyboard layout as a variation of the US extended layout. This works very well in all applications tested so far. However, there is a spooky kind of behavior in Safari. When I go to websites that require text input, everything is fine, unless I come to an HTML input box for passwords. As soon as I click into this field to type, the input source immediately switches back to US extended (which is also activated in the Input Menu of the pref pane International). This behavior can be reproduced every time. The US extended remains active even after I leave the password input box, and I have to revert it manually.

This is really annoying, especially as I have used the original US extended layout as a template - I don't know whether it is a problem in OsX (10.4.7 now), or in the layout created by Ukelele. Maybe the keyboard layout does not support the password "dots", but I really don't know what to do about it.

Reply
"Roeland", Sun, Jul 23, 2006 14:52 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

I got the same problem and I posted a question about this a while ago on the apple forum:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=544324&tstart=0

But that didn't get any replies.

I don't think this can be a ukelele problem.

Is there a way to send bug reports to apple? I can't find a place to do that.

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Jul 23, 2006 18:40 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

>Is there a way to send bug reports to apple? I can't find a place to do that.

There is, but you have to be registered as a developer to use it. Send me a copy of your keyboard layout and some examples of the problem, and I can file the bug with Apple.

Reply
"Roeland", Tue, Jul 25, 2006 03:41 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

Here you can download the layout + an there is an example input field.

http://roelandmoors.be/keyboard/

In de normal input field the layout works fine, but when going to the password input field, the unicode keyboard layout is disabled and the default is selected. After leaving this field the default layout keeps selected and you have select the correct layout again.

This only happens in Safari!

Maybe the solution is to add the character in the layout that the safari password input field generates. But I have no idea what that code is.

Reply
"Roeland", Tue, Jul 25, 2006 04:29 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

I changed my mind. It has to be something in the layout (or bundle?)

The unicode keyboards in the unicode bundle in /System all work just fine.

I tried adding my layout in the same way to the bundle, but that didn't help.

Reply
"lanzz", Thu, Jul 5, 2007 05:52 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

it's not a problem in the bundle.

in apple's view, all bundles are equal, but some are more equal than others. you always need to have an "approved" ascii bundle selected in keyboard preferences. you cannot, for example, select only a cyrillic layout and remove the U.S. layout - the U.S. layout will remain checked and disabled (so you cannot uncheck). this also goes for custom layouts - they are second-class layouts and cannot be used without an approved layout, even if they are just a slightly tweaked U.S. layout.

then again, there are ways to trick OS X into accepting your layout as a first-class one. if you place your custom layout in a bundle called "Roman.bundle", and the name of your layout is "U.S.", and its ID is 5000, OS X will happily accept it without requiring you to also enable one of the approved ones. this _might_ avoid the problem with safari switching the layout, since i suppose it just switches to the first "approved" layout in order to avoid entering your password in a weird script and wonder why it doesn't work (same reason why a caps lock indicator is displayed in password fields).

in my case, i have two layouts, and both are custom. one of them is a minor tweak on the "U.S." layout and is set up as i described above to replace the "U.S." layout, the other is a very customized layout (with bulgarian phonetic in caps-lock mode and latin qwerty otherwise) with no such trickeries regarding its installation, and is the one i use most of the time. safari will happily switch from the second layout to the one masquerading as the "U.S." layout, which indicates it will accept the workaround i described above.

what i find more funny is that the dvorak layouts are among the "blessed" ones. so you can have a custom layout which is actually qwerty-based, and a dvorak layout, and safari will happily switch from the qwerty-based layout to the dvorak layout, completely messing-up the good intention it has in helping you type your password properly.

now, the proper way to deal with this would be to tweak safari not to think for you, but i'm still looking for a way to achieve this.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jul 6, 2007 01:16 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

Thank you for working this out! It does explain some things well, and I'll include some of this information in the rewrite of the manual that I'm working on.

Reply
"FG", Wed, Aug 15, 2007 19:18 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

I have managed to make my custom French layout as the only source in the Input menu. hereâ��s what I did:

- In a text editor, I opened the layout I have made with Ukelele and changed the group to 126 (means unicode) and the id to an arbitrary negative one

- I opened the "Unicode.bundle" (control-click>show package content) in "/System/Library/Keyboard Layouts", then add my layout to the "Ressources" folder together with a custom icon

- I changed the permissions of these two files to match those of others files in the folder

- then I edited the Info.plist file (Unicode.bundle/Contents/Info.plist) with Property List editor (an utility that comes with the Apple Developer tools) and added a new child to root which I called, following the model of the other chidren, "KLInfo_TheNameOfMyLayout". I set the class of this property as a "dictionary", then added a child to it, which has the property "ISOCode" and the value "fr" (for France) as string. To modify the Info.plist, you have to first modify its permissions to gain write rights; after these modifications, I changed back the permissions to what they were.

- I removed all caches with a free app called "Maintenance", then restarted

- After restart, I selected my new layout and was able to deselect all others

- In the Account Preferences Pane, I enabled the Input Menu in the login window, then logout

- In the login window, I selected my new layout as the default one.

And thatâ��s all!â�¦ Hope this helps; Iâ��m not sure all of these steps are required.

Up to now, it has worked perfectly, in Safari â��s password forms as well.

Sorry for the bad english.

Reply
"Guillaume", Wed, Jan 9, 2008 08:21 (CST)
Re: input source change in Safari

Hi,

Could you post updated instructions to make this work on 10.5?

My layout (customized french dvorak) keeps reverting to the default mapping when in authentication dialog.

Thank you.

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Jan 23, 2008 03:26 (CST)
Re: input source change in Safari

The solution that worked for pre-10.5 systems won't work on 10.5, because Apple has changed the way that the system keyboard layouts are stored. They are no longer the XML .keylayout format, or even uchr resources, but they are all stored in an undocumented data format. That means that, unless you can reverse-engineer the data, you can't substitute your own keyboard layout for a system one.

The bug report that I have on this is listed as open by Apple, so there's no solution in sight at this point, as annoying as it is.

Reply
"Mark", Fri, Jul 4, 2008 11:39 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

This isn't true! I have a Dvorak keyboard and--well, actually, I'm having troubles with password input in Installer, but same concept. It switches back to QWERTY even when I have it disabled. Help....

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Jul 8, 2008 17:47 (CDT)
Re: input source change in Safari

This is a problem that Apple has to solve, unfortunately. I have a bug report from August 2006 about Safari switching input in a password field, and it is still listed as "open", meaning that it hasn't been fixed. I suspect that Installer has the same problem, but can't be certain of it.

Maybe this will be one of the bugs fixed in 10.6...

Reply
"Roeland", Sun, Nov 30, 2008 07:35 (CST)
Re: input source change in Safari

Is this bug fixed?

If I open an authentication window the keyboard still change, but after its closed, it changes back to the correct keyboard layout.

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 20:01 (CST)
Re: input source change in Safari

It is still showing as an open problem in Apple's bug reporting system, so it's not resolved yet.

Reply
"Todd", Mon, Jul 31, 2006 02:20 (CDT)
Intel Macs

Do you have any plans to port this program to Intel Macs? And can I create a layout in Ukelele on a PowerPC Mac and then load it on an Intel one without alteration?

Reply
"Jonathan", Mon, Jul 31, 2006 12:41 (CDT)
Re: Intel Macs

Have you tried running the existing program on your Intel-based Mac? I would expect it to work fine (thanks to Rosetta), but have not tested this personally.

You should be able to copy keylayout files between PPC and Intel Macs; they are independent of the machine architecture.

Reply
"Todd", Mon, Jul 31, 2006 21:17 (CDT)
Re: Intel Macs

I don't have an Intel Mac yet, and I am gathering info before I buy one. I have a very specific remap that I use on PCs that I'm really fast with, and it has modifier keys shuffled around, and it's really frustrating to try to use my PPC Mac without those modifiers... I love the thing excert for the modifiers. I was hoping that the universal binary would make it easier for programmers to port PC remappers to Mac, but I don't know much about programming so I don't know if I'm on the right track with that one...

Reply
"Todd", Sun, Aug 6, 2006 19:35 (CDT)
trouble remapping arrow & page-up/down keys

Hi, I almost have my dream layout working, but I can't seem to assign up/down/left/right functions to any keys besides the arrow keys, and I can't assign other keys to the arrow keys. I want to trade \ with the right arrow for instance, so I cut and paste the keystroke numbers for "right" and "\", but when I press either key, nothing happens; the cursor just sits there and kind of blinks irregularly, I think. How can I fix this? The manual lists hex and decimal #'s for the arrow keys, but they don't work when I type them in. I have an iBook G4.

Any help would be MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH APPRECIATED

Reply
"Тodd", Mon, Aug 7, 2006 18:45 (CDT)
Re: trouble remapping arrow & page-up/down keys

oh sorry, i didn't see that earlier post about this same problem... never mind

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Aug 8, 2006 00:10 (CDT)
Re: trouble remapping arrow & page-up/down keys

Unfortunately, this is a problem with many applications, including a lot of Apple's own applications, such as TextEdit, Microsoft Word, and Nisus Writer Express. They appear to rely on the key code rather than the output of a key to decide whether you've hit an arrow key or not.

Some applications work properly, such as TextWrangler. However, we just have to wait for Apple and others to fix the bug in those programs. I don't know when we could expect that - perhaps Leopard next year. It's unlikely to be a high priority for Apple, though. Sorry!

Reply
"Todd", Tue, Aug 8, 2006 13:09 (CDT)
Re: trouble remapping arrow & page-up/down keys

AHA! The new arrow keys DO work in some programs, like Apple Logic Pro! Do they work in Safari? My copy got deleted and I can't use it, but if you can find out for me, I could go about getting it back up and running.

Reply
"Todd Long", Wed, Aug 9, 2006 11:25 (CDT)
Re: trouble remapping arrow & page-up/down keys

darn it doesn't work in Safari. for your notes, the arrows do work in the following music programs: Logic, Max/MSP, Sibelius.

Reply
"John V. Keogh", Wed, Aug 9, 2006 08:18 (CDT)
Ukulele

Sounds great, but I think it should be spelt Ukulele!

Reply
"Jonathan", Wed, Aug 9, 2006 08:26 (CDT)
Re: Ukulele

Would you believe it.... I just deleted an old post (and response) on this exact point!

Yes, "Ukulele" is arguably "more correct", but many dictionaries accept "Ukelele" as a variant spelling, and this seems to fit better with the phrase "Unicode Keyboard Layout Editor", though of course it's not a precise abbreviation/acronym.

Reply
"Todd", Wed, Aug 9, 2006 15:42 (CDT)
keyboard layout icon

Is it possible to change the icon of custom key layouts to something besides the default keyboard icon? I have four custom ones in my list and can't tell them apart; flags would really help.

Reply
jonathan, Wed, Aug 9, 2006 15:45 (CDT)
Re: keyboard layout icon

From the page "Creating new keyboard layouts" in Ukelele Help:

To associate an icon with a keyboard layout, you need to create an icon and save it in the same folder as the keyboard layout file. The file name must be the same as the keyboard layout file name, with the ".keylayout" extension replaced by ".icns". So, if the keyboard layout is in the file "US Extended.keylayout", the icon would have to be in the file "US Extended.icns". Apple provides a simple icon editor called "Icon Composer", which is installed with developer tools.

Reply
"ismael", Wed, Aug 23, 2006 12:47 (CDT)
i need application like ukelele for mac os classic

thanks you very much

Reply
jonathan, Wed, Aug 23, 2006 13:40 (CDT) [modified by jonathan on Wed, Aug 23, 2006 13:46 (CDT)]
Re: i need application like ukelele for mac os classic

You can use Apple's resource editor ResEdit to edit the KCHR resources that define keyboard layouts in the classic Mac OS. Or you can use the SILKey for Macintosh utility to remap keystrokes. Depending on your needs, one or other of these solutions may be suitable.

If you need more information about keyboard software in pre-OS X systems, you'll probably have to look for the old Inside Macintosh documentation (I expect it's archived on http://developer.apple.com somewhere); this is all obsolete and unsupported software, so don't expect anyone to help with it. But it's still usable.

Reply
"Matt", Thu, Sep 7, 2006 09:01 (CDT)
Change to keyboard type not being saved

Hi there - thanks for the handy utility!

Like some other commenters, I'm trying to use Ukelele to create a keyboard layout that reflects the non-Apple USB keyabord I'm using. It looks like the USB Pro ISO layout is the one that I'm after.

However, I'm running into a problem. Once I've changed the keyboard type, saved and closed, when I open the layout file again in Ukelele, it thinks that the keyboard type is Standard ADB! It seems to "forget" all about the keyboard type I've set once I've closed the file.

Can you shed any light please? I'm on OS X 10.3.9. and Ukelele 1.7

Thanks in advance!

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Oct 10, 2006 14:10 (CDT)
Re: Change to keyboard type not being saved

The "keyboard type" in Ukelele is not something that is stored in the layout file; the actual keylayout file is independent of the physical keyboard type, and will work with whatever keyboard you happen to be using. The view options are just to help you relate the "virtual" key codes that go into the keylayout file to the physical arrangement of keys on a particular piece of hardware.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Oct 23, 2006 22:11 (CDT)
Re: Change to keyboard type not being saved

What you should do is to go to Preferences... and select the default keyboard type that you want (USB Pro ISO, in your case). In theory, that should do it for you. When you start Ukelele, if the system doesn't recognise your keyboard as an Apple keyboard, it should use what you specify in the Preferences dialog. I haven't tested it myself, as I work on a PowerBook, and don't have an external keyboard.

Reply
"Justin", Sat, Sep 23, 2006 14:21 (CDT)
Getting changes to work in all programs

I set the extra enter key next to the left arrow on my MacBook.  Trouble is, it works basically in the Finder only. All other programs switch the keyboard back to the American flag.  what can I do?

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Oct 10, 2006 14:15 (CDT)
Re: Getting changes to work in all programs

A couple of issues might be relevant here:

First, there's a preference setting to control whether the same layout is used in all programs, or a separate setting for each (see System Preferences / International / Input Menu, "Input source options").

Second, Ukelele creates Unicode layouts (whether or not you actually assign any non-MacRoman characters in the layout), but any applications that don't accept Unicode input will force the system to revert to a non-Unicode layout such as U.S. English.

Reply
"Franck Guadagnini", Tue, Sep 26, 2006 15:25 (CDT)
French icon

Thank you very much for this great app.

It works very well for meÂ ; but does someone know where in OS X are icons of languages, the one you can see in the input menuÂ ? I have check in the System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/Roman.bundle, but it doesn't have any icon, nor French neither USâ�¦ Where are theyÂ ?

Thank you

FG

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Oct 23, 2006 21:07 (CDT)
Re: French icon

They are in the Roman bundle, but stored as 'kcns' resources rather than as icon files, so they can't really be handled with any of the icon or resource editors that I have tried. Perhaps someone else knows how to extract kcns data to a format that can be edited.

Reply
"Marc Thouvenin", Wed, Sep 27, 2006 02:22 (CDT)
I can't download the file

Hello

It is impossible to download the file. Is there any trouble on your server?

Best

Marc

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Oct 10, 2006 14:02 (CDT)
Re: I can\'t download the file

There have been some access problems recently, but I believe things should be working better now.

Reply
"PZ", Sun, Oct 8, 2006 18:13 (CDT)
Change character key to Command Key

hello,

i have kensington slim type keyboard and it includes a really annoying extra slash-pipe key to the left of the spacebar. this is where the Command Key is supposed to be!  Needless to say, this is very annoying.

Also, the keycode output of the key (10) is different than the other slash-pipe key(42).   So there shouldn't be a conflict.

But basically I need to make this key (which appears in the Extended ADB layout as the key next to the 1) into a command key.

Also, I need to switch the Command and Option key. I can do this in the keyboard preference pane, but it would be nice to switch everything at once.

Thanks for the help and the great product

-phil

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Oct 10, 2006 14:06 (CDT)
Re: Change character key to Command Key

My understanding is that "modifier" keys (control, command, option, shift, caps-lock) are treated as a separate category from "character" keys, and a layout resource such as Ukelele creates can't convert between these two kinds. The operating system makes the distinction at a lower level before the key codes are mapped through the keylayout.

Reply
"Alex Martini", Tue, Oct 10, 2006 12:50 (CDT)
Mapping Delete

I'm making a one-handed keyboard layout on the left side of the keyboard, so I need to move the delete key. When I copy the Unicode value  from the delete key to another key, nothing happens when I press that key. I've checked the XML file, and the lines for the delete key and the key I mapped look the same to me. Any suggestions?

Reply
jonathan, Tue, Oct 10, 2006 14:04 (CDT)
Re: Mapping Delete

I think many programs handle "control" functions such as arrow and delete keys in their own special way, and ignore the character mapping from the keyboard layout. You may find that redefining such keys will work in some applications but not others.

Reply
"Casey R.", Wed, Oct 11, 2006 07:28 (CDT)
Hrm...

I'm guessing that this is outside the scope of Ukelele, but it never hurts to ask...

Can I remap my right shift button to act like multiple modifiers? Specifically like shift-ctrl-option-command?

Reply
jonathan, Wed, Oct 11, 2006 07:45 (CDT)
Re: Hrm...

No, I don't think so. You could set up a keyboard map so that the characters generated with right-shift down are the same as would have been generated by shift-ctl-opt-cmd; but this won't make applications behave as if the command key were actually pressed.

Reply
"Michael Monos", Tue, Oct 17, 2006 15:21 (CDT)
Greek Polytonic

I am trying to edit the 10.4 Greek Polytonic Keyboard as it has certain inadequacies for my purposes. The question is this: I would like to replace a particular result for a dead key combination, but when I put the chosen character in the edit dead key process, I get a diamond with a question mark in it. The place of the character is 1050 / 0 . What can be done about this?

Thanks for the software.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Oct 23, 2006 22:19 (CDT)
Re: Greek Polytonic

I'm not sure what character you mean. Is it 1050 decimal (41A hexadecimal), Cyrillic capital letter Ka? How are you specifying it? If you put &#x1050; you would get the hexadecimal 1050, which is Myanmar letter sha, which probably isn't in any font that you have, and so the "last resort" font shows the missing glyph symbol.

Reply
"Todd", Thu, Nov 9, 2006 12:49 (CST)
excellent work

This program is awesome! I am so glad you wrote it. Keep up the good work! I hope you continue future support. It has really made life easy for my typing Russian, Ukrainian, and Portuguese because I made Dvorak-based phonetic layouts with lots of dead keys where I just type the transliterated sounds and it shows up correctly in the foreign symbols! I wouldn't mind paying for a future version if you decide to do that, to ensure future compatibility with OS X Leopard. Great job.

Reply
"Todd", Thu, Nov 9, 2006 12:50 (CST)
great job

this program rules. excellent work. keep it up!

Reply
"Jason", Mon, Nov 13, 2006 06:24 (CST)
can't switch from a JIS Japanese keyboard to U.S. keyboard layout

Thanks for this wonderful app.  The only problem is that I can't seem to get it to work for me but I suspect that I'm doing something wrong.

I have removed the JIS keyboard that was originally installed in a iBook G4 and replaced it with a U.S. iBook G4 keyboard.

The keyboard works but is still behaving as a JIS (e.g. @ mark over next to the "p" key instead of being shift-2)

I used this app to try to change the keyboard layout but everytime I try to save the ANSI keyboard layout it seems to get switched back to JSI because when I reopen the keyboard layout with Ukelele it says it's a JIS layout instead of ANSI.

What am I doing wrong? I have logged out each time I add the keyboard layout and select it from the Preferences International pane but....

Any help will be greatly appreciated.  My grey hairs are multiplying :-)

Jason

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Jan 9, 2007 07:13 (CST)
Re: can\'t switch from a JIS Japanese keyboard to U.S. keyboard layout

> I have removed the JIS keyboard that was originally installed in a iBook G4 and replaced it with a U.S. iBook G4 keyboard.

> The keyboard works but is still behaving as a JIS (e.g. @ mark over next to the "p" key instead of being shift-2)

>I used this app to try to change the keyboard layout but everytime I try to save the ANSI keyboard layout it seems to get switched back to JSI because when I reopen the keyboard layout with Ukelele it says it's a JIS layout instead of ANSI.

There may be more than one thing going on here. One is simply a display issue. Ukelele can display many different keyboard types, and the particular one displayed has no effect on the actual keyboard layout - changing the view does not change the keyboard layout.

However, I suspect that what you are seeing is that the system somehow believes that you have a JIS keyboard attached. I don't know how that can be changed. I don't know even if it is controlled by software or hardware. If you open Keyboard Viewer, do you get the JIS or the ANSI keyboard shown when you press a key?

Contact me by email if you want to.

Reply
"Ezzie", Thu, Jan 25, 2007 21:59 (CST)
Re: can\'t switch from a JIS Japanese keyboard to U.S. keyboard layout

I did the same thing with a PowerBook G4 and had the same problem.

Found this site that generates an XML script.

http://wordherd.com/keyboards/

Replaced the contents of the .keyboardlayout file with the new script and it worked fine.

Good luck!

Reply
"Cezanna", Thu, Nov 23, 2006 10:10 (CST)
'+e ==> é How to ?

I didn't find how to make a true US international keyboard.

How I can do to make that ' and AFTER e give me Ã© ?

How I can recuperate under ukelele, a rsrc file format of a keyboard ?

( Or How I can recuperate the actual keyboard description ? )

Thank for this geat app.

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Jan 9, 2007 07:20 (CST)
Re: \'+e ==> é How to ?

> How I can do to make that ' and AFTER e give me Ã© ?

The way to do this is to make e a dead key, with terminator e, and output Ã© when the ' key is pressed. However, you may wish to think about this one first. Do you use the ' key after e without intending to get Ã©, for example, typing 'example'? This is the sort of issue that has led to the current methods.

> How I can recuperate under ukelele, a rsrc file format of a keyboard ?

I'm not sure exactly what you're asking here. If you have an older keyboard resource (either KCHR or uchr), Apple provides a tool for converting these, but it's a command-line tool, which makes it not very friendly. If you want to do it, but don't want to use the tool, you can send it to me by email, and I can convert it for you.

If you are wanting to make a keyboard layout created by Ukelele into a resource form, it's not always possible, or easy. You can always convert to uchr, but only sometimes can you convert to KCHR.

Reply
"Uffe Jakobsen", Thu, Mar 6, 2008 06:44 (CST)
Re: \\'+e ==> é How to ?

>

> Apple provides a tool for converting these, but it's a command-line tool, which makes it not very friendly.

>

What is the command path/name for this tool ?

Thanks in advance

Kind regards Uffe Jakobsen

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Mar 6, 2008 19:04 (CST) [modified by jonathan on Fri, Mar 7, 2008 01:51 (CST)]
Re: '+e ==> é How to ?

The tools are part of the Apple Font Tool Suite, which you can get from http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/18553

The relevant tool is called kluchrtoxml. Its usage is fairly simple. At the command line (in Terminal, or other such program) you do

kluchrtoxml <filename>
where you give the name of the resource file. It will create appropriate .keylayout and .icns files in the same directory.

Reply
"Chris", Tue, Apr 1, 2008 14:55 (CDT)
Re: \'+e ==> é How to ?

I have tried using kluchrtoxml but it produces no output. Here is the command line I use

kluchrtoxml /TransUkr.rsrc

Why do I get no output?

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Apr 14, 2008 20:37 (CDT)
Re: \'+e ==> é How to ?

If that was your command line, you told the computer to use the file TransUkr.rsrc, located at the top level of your hard disk, which is unlikely to be its location. You need to give the correct path for the file. If you are already in the correct folder, leave out the "/" to get the correct path. You may need to do something like:

cd ~/Documents/KeyboardLayouts

kluchrtoxml TransUkr.rsrc

Reply
"Nichotin", Sat, Aug 15, 2009 15:01 (CDT)
Re: \'+e ==> é How to ?

I found out that there are two binaries, klkchrtoxml and kluchrtoxml. The first one worked for the Norwegian Dvorak layout I wanted to convert, the other did not.

Just a little heads up.

Reply
"Alexis", Fri, Nov 24, 2006 08:03 (CST)
Keyboard switching automatically under OS X Tiger

Hello,

first of all thanks very much for this software, it works like a charm.

I am writing on this message board because I also have the annoying problem of Keyboard switching automatically when I change from one application to another.

This even happens when I use Terminal.app, I switch back and forth between two windows and my keyboard goes back to English (I am not even using an English keyboard in my installation!)

In my setup I have the following keyboard configurations:

French, Japanese and German.

My laptop has a German Keyboard and I have either my French or Japanese keyboard connected via USB.

I have this problem which pretty much every application I use: Safari, Mail, Terminal, AdiumX

I configured 1 Input for all Documents in the System Preferences, so now, I really don't know what else to do with this.

Has anyone got a fix for this Mac OS X behavior?

PS: I have Tiger latest update

Thanks in advance!

Reply
"Pukku", Mon, Dec 4, 2006 19:25 (CST)
Info on creating .keylayout files by hand

Hi!  I really like Ukelele, but I was having problems mentally making things work, so I wound up making a .keylayout file by hand.  If anyone else is taking this route, I have some resources at http://homepage.mac.com/pukku/keylayout_files/index.html that might be of use.  Primarily, they will help you figure out what key corresponds to what code.

HTH,

Ricky

Reply
"Gyom", Thu, Dec 7, 2006 11:35 (CST)
Swapping "Alt" and "Command" key mappings on a PC keyboard

I used Ukelele successfully to remap the punctuation keys of an external USB keyboard for my laptop. It is a standard french PC keyboard, and only a few punctuation keys differed from ukelele's "french layout".

I was very happy with that (great software !), but only for an instant, because I then realized that I was then facing a much more complicated challenge. This keyboard had now a layout almost identical to my everyday mac usb keyboard, but one thing was still wrong: The "Windows" key was mapped to "Command", and the "Alt" keys were mapped to "Alt" ("option"). Great.

The wrong thing is that on my mac, the command keys are the *first* ones next to the space bar, and then Alt, and then Ctrl. On the PC keyboard, there is the space bar, first Alt, then Windows, and then Ctrl. That made my brand new layout almost unusable, because of my fingers going by reflex to the wrong keys...

After messing around for a long time with Ukelele's modifiers window, but without success (this soft is *almost* perfect, but that "modifier" thing is just too complicatedd for me), I finally found the solution: In System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys, there is a very simple panel that lets you choose your modifiers. In my case, I just swapped "Alt" and "Command", and now it works fine: the physical "windows" key is my "Alt", and the "Alt" key is my "Command", AND they are located like on the mac keyboard !

Not very tricky after all, but it took me a whole afternoon to figure out, so I post it here. hope this helps.

-Gyom ( salagnac@imag.fr )

Reply
"Tom White", Sun, Dec 10, 2006 09:36 (CST)
trouble with layouts and TextExpander

I've created a one-handed Dvorak layout, but I'm having trouble getting it to play nicely with another of my favourite apps, TextExpander. TextExpander listens to keyboard input, waiting for user-defined abbreviations to be typed, and then expands them into whatever text the user has pre-defined. For example, you may want to be able to simply type "sig" for your full email signiture, or "ht.com" for "http://www..com", and it's even able to place your cursor wherever you like in the expanded text.  I'm sure you can see how this would be handy for someone using a one-handed keyboard layout.

Anyhow, the problem is this: When switching from my built-in layout to any of the custom layouts I've created in Ukelele, TextExpander's functionality is broken. Typing the abbreviations produces nothing. However, if you press the keys as though the Canadian layout was selected, that is, the keys which would correspond to the abbreviation on the Canadian layout, then TextExpander expands the text to the desired extension.

This does not occur, however, when switching between built-in layouts provided with OS X. So there must be something different about the files produced in Ukelele vs. the layout files provided by Apple. If anyone can help me to find out what that difference might be, or can otherwise shed some light on this problem, it would be greatly appreciated.

Tom White

OS X 10.4.8

PowerBook G4 1.5GHZ

Reply
"kogalurshear", Sun, Dec 10, 2006 09:47 (CST)
GNU emacs CTRL key issue

First, this is a nicely done app.  Though, I'm having an issue with some of my re-mappings, but only in emacs.  I'm using a modified Dvorak mapping.  CTRL keys work great in every app except emacs.  For example, in this Firefox browser, CTRL-e moves to the end of the line, but in emacs the key combo deletes, since the Dvorak "e" key is the qwerty "d" key.  It's as if emacs is ignoring Ukelele when I use the CTRL key.  I'd blame Ukelele, but all other apps seem to work fine.  Any help would be appreciated.

ksc

Reply
"kogalurshear", Mon, Dec 11, 2006 07:25 (CST)
Re: GNU emacs CTRL key issue

Just to add a bit of clarity to my post, I'm running Carbon Emacs and what is baffling is that when I use the Dvorak keyboard under the "System Preferences -> International" menu, things work fine.  All CTRL keys work great.  It's only when I use Ukelele (which I use to further modify some unrelated number and punctuation keys that I experience the  problem.

ksc

Reply
"xo", Mon, Mar 12, 2007 17:17 (CDT)
Re: GNU emacs CTRL key issue

I have exactly the same problem but with vim...

All C-* combination cannot be accessed. It is a real pain!

Reply
"Valentin Vassilevski", Tue, Jan 2, 2007 09:17 (CST)
Try the TypeTrainer4Mac with your customized layout

Typetrainer4Mac is a typing tutor which accepts a lage variety of customized layouts. It is a freeware. Try it with your own layout!

Reply
"A.M.", Sat, Jan 13, 2007 13:17 (CST)
Thanks.

Many thanks for this application — it enabled me to modify Apple's Hebrew layout for OS X 10.4 into something usable. I don't know how I could've managed to do it without ukelele (the other alternative — diving into the actual XML file, was not a possibility, as I had no time to spend on it).

Reply
"nd", Sat, Jan 20, 2007 13:47 (CST)
Problem with Powerbook and 6 characters/button...

hi there,

i really like ukelele. i got some problems creating my keyboardlayout, though.

I use a G4 Powerbook 12" with Mac OS X.

I need 6 ModifierKey- Combinations.

I tried this:

0 all up

1 shift down, rest up

2 option down, rest up

3 option+shift down, rest up

4 control down, rest up

5 control+shift down, rest up

Everything worked fine besides 4 and 5.

so i tried to create my keyboard again. This time i tried if it works everytime i changed something. starting with combination 4 and 5. everything worked so far.

then i defined combination 0. and it didnt work anymore. why is this ? doesnt make sense to me!

My Powerbook only has left+right shift, left control and left option.

How can i make 6 different combinations that work ? i tried caps lock, too, but it said "layout too complex".

there is also an "enter" key right next to left command. I really never use it, so maybe i can use this button as a modifier key ?

thanks in advance!

Reply
"M. N. Jackson", Sat, Jan 27, 2007 14:26 (CST)
dead key highlight indicator

If I create a new keyboard and add dead keys, they work, but in Cocoa applications they don't display the yellow highlight indicator that shows that it is a dead key combination. But if I base the new keyboard on a the US Extended layout, and add new dead key combinations, both the new and the old dead keys display the yellow highlight. Is there a command in Ukelele that enables that behaviour, or is there a command that can be added to the xml file?

Thanks.

Reply
"Stefano", Mon, Feb 19, 2007 13:49 (CST)
Problem with ISO keyboard

Hi, I've seted up a keyboard layout to be used on an ISO keyboard (with a key between shift and first letter). Everytime I save the layout ukelele switch it back to ANSI keyboard and it doesn't seems to care about the fact that the keyboard was defined as a ISO one. I've also tried to edit manually the config file changing <keyMapSet id="ANSI"> with <keyMapSet id="ISO"> without any luck... there is someone who know how to make it works ?

let me know

tnx

Stefano

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 12, 2007 06:35 (CDT)
Re: Problem with ISO keyboard

> Hi, I've seted up a keyboard layout to be used on an ISO keyboard (with a key between shift and first letter). Everytime I save the layout ukelele switch it back to ANSI keyboard and it doesn't seems to care about the fact that the keyboard was defined as a ISO one. I've also tried to edit manually the config file changing  with  without any luck... there is someone who know how to make it works ?

I think that what you are seeing is just the way Ukelele displays the keyboard layout. If you have a non-Apple keyboard, you might want to go to Preferences and set the default layout to an ISO layout. That should help you.

If you have an Apple ISO layout, but Ukelele doesn't recognise it at first, try using the keyboard to open a file rather than just the mouse (press Enter or Return rather than click OK) - the system doesn't report the keyboard to a program until the user types (presumably because the user might have more than one hardware keyboard connected).

Reply
"Patrick", Sun, Mar 11, 2007 11:56 (CDT)
Keyboard Viewer Problem

Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but when I use Keyboard Viewer to see what layout I'm actually in it switches to display U.S. when I'm in Ukelele but then back to my actual current layout when I click on any other application or the Finder.  Oddly, when I type in Ukelele, the keys are still mapped to my real current layout and not U.S. (unless I really am in U.S.)

For example, say I'm really in Dvorak.  I load up a layout in Ukelele and try to change the key labeled "f" on the actual physical keyboard which is really u in Dvorak.  Say that in the layout I'm editting that key is currently assigned o.  So in Ukelele, I double click on the o and go to type in the new symbol I want.  Say I want it to be u.  Then I press the "f" key and this mysterious thing happens:  in the dialog box, I get a u, as expected since I'm in Dvorak.  However, the Keyboard Viewer thinks I pressed f because it always thinks I'm in U.S. whenever I'm in Ukelele no matter what keyboard layout I'm actually in.

This makes editting layouts sortof cumbersome when I don't have the layout I'm in completely memorized.

Is this a bug or a feature and is there a way to get keyboard layout not to switch to U.S. when I'm in Ukelele?

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 12, 2007 07:00 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard Viewer Problem

I don't see this behaviour. Keyboard Viewer always seems to be showing the correct keyboard for me. Is it only in Ukelele or in other applications as well?

Reply
"Mathieu", Sun, Apr 1, 2007 18:32 (CDT)
Re: Keyboard Viewer Problem

I've got the same problem with the Japanese Hiragana keyboard and if I remember well, it appeared recently, probably with the 10.4 version of MacOs.

I have a physical AZERTY keyboard. I use several keyboards and input methods: Canadian CSA and Hiragana for Japanese.

When I use the canadian CSA or French keyboards, the keyboard viewer displays the right layout: the canadian.

When I use the Hiragana keyboard and input method, it displays the US keyboard.

I first thought that it was because the Hiragana is not a direct input method but there is no problem with the Chinese:

When I use a traditional Chinese keyboard and input method, the keyboard viewer displays the right Chinese layout.

I think that it is a bug form Apple. Someone could send them a bug report...

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Sun, Mar 11, 2007 19:08 (CDT)
Brazilian ABNT Layout

Does anyone know what the keycode is for the extra key on the Brazilian ABNT keyboard (it has one more than ISO and two more than ANSI) and what characters are supposed to be on it for normal, shift, option, and option shift?  Thanks for any help! email tom at bluesky dot org

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 12, 2007 06:41 (CDT)
Re: Brazilian ABNT Layout

> Does anyone know what the keycode is for the extra key on the Brazilian ABNT keyboard (it has one more than ISO and two more than ANSI) and what characters are supposed to be on it for normal, shift, option, and option shift?  Thanks for any help! email tom at bluesky dot org

The simplest approach is to open Ukelele, show the Key Code window (Keyboard > Show Key Code), then hold the extra key down. The key code is displayed in the Key Code window. If you want to see what the output is for that key, you can choose Other Keyboard Keyâ�¦ from the Keyboard menu, choose Code, and then enter that key code. You will get a dialog with the existing output in it.

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Tue, Mar 13, 2007 09:10 (CDT)
Re: Brazilian ABNT Layout

Unfortunately I don't have access to one of these unique keyboards, which only seem to exist in Brazil.  However I was lucky to have someone send me a copy of  another layout on which the 12th bottom row key did reportedly work, and from this it appears that the key code for that is 94, in case anyone might need that info.   As far as I know, Ukelele doesn't have an option to display an ABNT layout with the extra key, so the code for it has to be added to the xml manually (in ABNT is does / and ?).

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Mar 13, 2007 09:54 (CDT)
Re: Brazilian ABNT Layout

> Unfortunately I don't have access to one of these unique keyboards, which only seem to exist in Brazil.  However I was lucky to have someone send me a copy of  another layout on which the 12th bottom row key did reportedly work, and from this it appears that the key code for that is 94, in case anyone might need that info.   As far as I know, Ukelele doesn't have an option to display an ABNT layout with the extra key, so the code for it has to be added to the xml manually (in ABNT is does / and ?).

You can change it with Ukelele, using the Other Keyboard Keyâ�¦ menu item, click Code, and enter the key code 94. That will give you a dialog box allowing you to specify the output you want. Hold the modifiers you want down before choosing the command from the menu.

Ukelele can only display keyboards that it knows about, which is basically the Apple keyboards.

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Wed, Mar 14, 2007 15:41 (CDT)
Various Layouts Made with Ukelele

If anyone needs layouts for odd languages or starting points for their own custom layouts, you are welcome to use any of ones I've made in the last few years, almost always with Ukelele:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/tckbs.html

Reply
"Carango", Sun, Apr 8, 2007 21:57 (CDT)
Password Dialog keyboard problem

Hi,

I installed a custom keyboard layout and it works great everywhere but in the password dialog. Whenever a password dialog comes out, the layout is changed to Dvorak! The only way to type a password is to change the layout to US standard everytime. This does not happened with builtin keyboard layouts. Has anyone experienced this?

I am using Mac OS 10.4 tiger.

Thanks.

Reply
"walli", Wed, May 2, 2007 05:15 (CDT)
Re: Password Dialog keyboard problem

we've been discussing this problem last year, starting with my post in July. There is no solution yet, and also the new 1.8b1 version of Ukelele does not solve the problem. The strange thing is that the problem WAS actually solved in Os 10.4.8, but reappeared in 10.4.9. Apparently the xml keyboard layout parser in OsX has (once again) problems with the files created by Ukelele, and the system automatically reverts to a "roman" script instead of the unicode script of the Ukelele keyboard layouts, whenever a password field is selected. I am sure the problem would be solved if Ukelele allowed creating keyboard layouts in "roman script".

Reply
"flo", Mon, May 21, 2007 09:30 (CDT)
Re: Password Dialog keyboard problem

Hi,

I'm using a modified German layout in "roman script" and I'm having the same problems.

Reply
"Rory", Thu, Apr 19, 2007 14:43 (CDT)
Swapped two keys, but command makes them act like not swapped

I created a new keyboard layout based on the U.S. Extended layout in the System folder and did nothing but swap the tilde and weird double-S "section" symbol, to make by Egyptian keyboard more like a US keyboard. I want the tilde above the tab key, and the section symbol to the left of the Z key. (Actually, I want that key gone and a longer shift key, and the backslash key to be on top of return, but the physical configuration of my keyboard makes that impossible.) After I moved it to the /Library folder and logged in and out, it didn't work. When I typed in TextEdit (and other apps), the keys were swapped, but when I tried the Command-tilde shortcut to cycle through windows, it wouldn't work unless I pressed the key where the tilde used to be before I swapped it.

Later, I added a custom icon, and then remade the layout based on the U.S. layout in the Ukelele application folder, which is what I actually use on my computer. However, the keys still acted like they weren't swapped when I held down the Command key.

Also, I chose U.S. Extended at first because I couldn't find U.S. in the pop-up menu of templates to use to create a new layout. I later found that layout in the Ukelele folder, but there is no .icns file for it, so I was forced to base my .icns file on the U.S. Extended .icns file (I just changed the U in the corner of the flag to a tilde). I've searched all over my system, but I can't find any original U.S..keylayout or U.S..icns file (it's just the .icns file I'm interested in, though). Can anyone please help?

To summarize, I have two problems:

- After swapping two keys, they type as I would expect, but Command makes them act like they aren't swapped

- I can't find the .icns file for the U.S. layout

Thanks.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Apr 20, 2007 07:27 (CDT)
Re: Swapped two keys, but command makes them act like not swapped

First question is, how did you swap the keys? With the "Swap Keys" command, or by changing the output manually? If the latter, you should check the way that the keys are mapped with the command key down. You may need to change those as well.

The US icon is stored in the Roman bundle (/System/Library/Keyboard Layouts/Roman.bundle/Contents/Resources/Roman.rsrc), but it's a kcns resource. I haven't found a way to convert it to an icns file, though it should be possible â�� Apple's Technical Note describing XML keyboard layouts (TN 2056) says, "...the kcns resource format, which is new for Mac OS X and is the same as the icns icon format...". As far as I can tell, it may be possible to convert, but it may only be possible with a hex editor, unless you have Resorcerer.

Reply
"Rory", Mon, Apr 23, 2007 11:05 (CDT)
Re: Swapped two keys, but command makes them act like not swapped

I used the "Swap Keys" command both times. Any other ways I could fix it?

Thanks for the info on the US icon.

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Apr 26, 2007 06:26 (CDT)
Re: Swapped two keys, but command makes them act like not swapped

Well, I tried to replicate your problem, but it works for me. I don't have an ISO keyboard (with that extra key), so I can't test it extensively, but if I type command-Â§ in the swapped keyboard, it doesn't behave as if it were command-`. Is there any particular application where it doesn't work as expected?

Reply
"Rory", Sun, Apr 29, 2007 08:37 (CDT)
Semi-solution found

I found the problem and the solution, but I still don't know why the problem existed. I went to System Preferences and looked in the Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard Shortcuts section, and found that for some reason, the "Move focus to next window in active application" and "Move focus to the window drawer" shortcuts were Command-[Section symbol] and Command-Option-[Section symbol]. When I changed the language back and forth between U.S. and my modified layout, the shortcuts changed between using tilde and the section symbol (if I waited long enough or switched tabs in the Keyboard & Mouse section).

I changed those shortcuts in my layout to use tildes and now they work fine. However, the application switcher brought up with Command-Tab still uses the wrong key (tilde should cycle backwards through the applications), and I don't see any option for it in the Keyboard Shortcuts list. It seems that keyboard layouts may also be tied to system keyboard shortcuts. If they are, you may want to note that somewhere in the Ukelele documentation, and possibly fix some bug in Swap Keys that makes it not always change keyboard shortcuts. Please tell me if you find some way to change the shortcut for the application switcher and any other applications there might be with custom shortcuts for the tilde.

Reply
"John Brownie", Sat, Apr 21, 2007 00:50 (CDT)
Re: Swapped two keys, but command makes them act like not swapped

Re getting the U.S..icns file, I found that Apple's conversion tool for creating an XML keyboard layout file from a KCHR resource also converts the kcns resource to an icns file. I will see what I can do about getting the icns files generally available.

Reply
"Zeusz", Thu, May 17, 2007 12:42 (CDT)
Did my Return disappear?

I have been using Ukelele for a few weeks, when suddenly my enter/return key just disappeared. It is not a hardware problem, because fn+return/enter functions properly, and all other users on my Mac can us the enter/return properly.

What do I need to do to get my key back?

Thanks:

ZZZZZ

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, May 18, 2007 06:02 (CDT)
Re: Did my Return disappear?

> I have been using Ukelele for a few weeks, when suddenly my enter/return key just disappeared. It is not a hardware problem, because fn+return/enter functions properly, and all other users on my Mac can us the enter/return properly.

Does this mean that you have a keyboard layout created/edited with Ukelele as your regular layout? Have you tried switching to another keyboard layout, and seeing whether the problem goes away? If it does, then it's the keyboard layout. If the problem persists, then something is is the source of your difficulty.

If it's the keyboard layout that is the problem, open it in Ukelele, double-click the return key, and check that the output is the default (shown in the dialog) of #x000d (with the ampersand before and semicolon after). If it's not, reset it to that value. You will probably want to restart your computer afterwards to make sure that the corrected keyboard layout is loaded properly.

Reply
"Dean Snyder", Fri, May 18, 2007 16:30 (CDT)
Decouple caps lock?

Is there any way to decouple the caps lock key from its standard interaction with the shift key?

I want to be able to use the caps lock to, in essence, switch between two keyboard layouts (while retaining normal shift key uppercasing for both layouts).

Can this be done? If so, I can't figure out how to specify this in Ukelele.

Thanks

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, May 21, 2007 03:53 (CDT)
Re: Decouple caps lock?

Decoupling of keys like this is something I'm looking at for a future version, though there are quite some complexities with it.

In the meantime, the best way to handle it would be to delete the modifier combination for caps lock, and then add a new modifier combination for caps lock, which would then have nothing bound to the keys. You would probably have to create new modifier combinations for caps lock + shift, caps lock + option, and so on.

Reply
"Paul S", Tue, Sep 22, 2009 18:40 (CDT)
Re: Decouple caps lock?

I'm also trying to do this but can't figure out how. Can you provide a step-by-step example? thanks!

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Oct 8, 2009 04:25 (CDT)
Re: Decouple caps lock?

This is implemented now, but it's called "unlink" rather than "decouple".

To get caps lock completely independent of shift, choose "Unlink Modifier Set..." from the Keyboard menu. Click OK in the dialog, and then set caps lock down, and press any ordinary key (letter, number, punctuation).

When that is done, you can change the output for any key with caps lock, and it will not affect the output of the key with shift.

Hope that's clear enough.

Reply
"habibi", Mon, Jun 4, 2007 09:41 (CDT)
download fails

i cant download 1.8 b2, the diskimage is corrupted...

Reply
martinpk, Tue, Jun 5, 2007 04:07 (CDT)
Re: download fails

Thanks for reporting this. We had a server problem — please try again now. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Reply
"Marfa", Fri, Jun 15, 2007 05:02 (CDT)
formatting for Windows

thank you for this wonderful intuitive program.

Since I'm working on both systems, mac and windows I wonder if it's possible to create a layout on the mac and transfer/convert or save it as a keyboard-layout for windows xp?

Thanks in advance

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jun 15, 2007 08:07 (CDT)
Re: formatting for Windows

No, the system on Windows is completely different, I'm afraid. At present, I know of no way to convert a Mac OS X keyboard layout to a Windows keyboard layout.

Reply
"Peter Craddock", Wed, Jun 20, 2007 09:06 (CDT)
Doesn't show up?

Okay, I've been having serious problems with this issue: the keyboard file is in the right folder, but it won't show up in International. What do I have to do to make it work?

Reply
"Peter Craddock", Wed, Jun 20, 2007 09:28 (CDT)
re: a few details

A few details on what is going on: I have a modified Dvorak keyboard. That one, based on the normal Dvorak one, works fine and can be found in "International".

But this second one I've made doesn't show up. It's based on the first one and just adds, like the "Dvorak - QWERTY", a whole "Cmd" modifier that enables the user, when using that layout, to use all the "cmd + ..." keys with the physical AZERTY layout that I have on my keyboard, instead of having to know Dvorak to be able to access anything.

This modification is based on the modifiers that are in the "Dvorak - QWERTY" keyboard Ukelele bundles with the app, and therefore ?should? be correct, no?

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Jun 21, 2007 05:13 (CDT)
Re: re: a few details

First question is, is the name of the keyboard layout the same as another keyboard layout? That may block the system loading your keyboard layout, though it's not something I've tested.

If it's not that, it may be that there is something funny going on with the file. You could send it to me (compressed, preferably, as keyboard layout files are fragile in email) and I can look at it. My email address is in the Read Me file on the install disk image.

If you are comfortable looking at log files, you can open the Console application and see if there are any error messages in the console log that contain "uchr" (without the quotes) - just type uchr into the filter field in the top right. If there is a message, it would probably give some information about what was wrong with the keyboard layout, so please send me that information.

Reply
"Peter Craddock", Fri, Jun 22, 2007 03:04 (CDT)
Re: a few details

Thank you, I have sent you an e-mail.

Reply
"mdc", Sun, Jul 1, 2007 18:22 (CDT)
Re: a few details

My layout doesnt show up in the input menu either...I tried restarting. Its a layout based on the US original.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Jul 2, 2007 03:14 (CDT)
Re: a few details

There was a bug in recent versions (perhaps as long as 1.7b1) that made the "Copy of an existing key map" option for creating new modifier combinations work incorrectly. The main symptom is that the keyboard layout refuses to load. It's been fixed in the most recent release, but it doesn't attempt to repair the problem, unfortunately. It can be fixed by hand editing the XML, but that defeats the purpose of Ukelele! If you have an affected keyboard layout, you can email it to me (compressed, please), and I will try to fix it. My email address is in the Read Me file.

Reply
"mdc", Mon, Jul 2, 2007 14:23 (CDT)
Re: a few details

My problem is solved, it was very simple. When I created a layout from an existing one the filename generated was myfilename.keylay and not myfilename.keylayout as it should.

My problem now is that ctrl+anykey doesnt work. fn and alt works as they should but no combination involving ctrl.

Another thing is that it goes back to the english layout when i open ceirtain webpages even though I checked use one input source in all documents.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jul 6, 2007 01:18 (CDT)
Re: a few details

The control key combinations are problematic. The system tends to ignore them, or treat them as something else. The source of the problem is the system's key bindings. It is possible to work around it, but it involves making changes in system files, which is not recommended for most people. If you want to know the details, ask me by email.

Reply
"Tony Barry", Sun, May 18, 2008 16:52 (CDT)
Re: a few details

Hello John,

     I notice in this post that you mention there is a way to get around the Control + B producing cursor movement instead of a glyph.  I presume this is by altering standardKeyBindings.dict

     Could you send me what info you have on this, as I have been trying for ages to get a keyboard resource into OS X ... and the key layout uses Control + B, + A, + E ... which all map to EMACS cursor movement.  I have not been able to find where Apple keep the EMACS bindings, or how to over-ride them.

Regards,

Tony Barry

tonybarry AT aapt DOT net DOT au

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, May 22, 2008 03:34 (CDT)
Re: a few details

For those wanting the instructions on changing the system files to allow use of control key combinations, they are in the new manual, on page 28.

Reply
"Joe Wildish", Fri, Jul 6, 2007 17:46 (CDT)
Model-M keyboard, UK physical layout

I got myself an original IBM Model-M keyboard with a UK physical layout last year. I was hoping Ukelele could help me configure my Mac to support it fully, which it almost does, except for one small problem which renders the layout I have almost useless :( Maybe you can shed some light on the issue?

The keyboard has a similar (identical actually) looking physical layout to the "USB Pro keyboard ISO", as chosen through Ukelele. Unfortunately, the application does not distinguish between a key press made with the key to the left of enter (printed on my board, those are characters ~ and #), and the key to the right of the left shift key (on my keyboard, | and \). This means I can't configure the layout to do different things for those keys (and as I do lots of UNIX work, | and # are essential to me).

Is this a limitation of my own keyboard? I would not be surprised as the thing is running through a PS2 -> USB adaptor. But I thought I would ask here, in case there is something I can do. Thanks for your help.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Aug 27, 2007 05:44 (CDT)
Re: Model-M keyboard, UK physical layout

If you make the key code window visible, and type those two keys, do you get the same key code? If you do, then there is no way to make them behave differently â�� the operating system is going to treat them as the same key in almost all contexts.

If they have different key codes, it might be a case of linked keys, which you can unlink with the most recent version of Ukelele.

Reply
"Joe Wildish", Thu, Aug 30, 2007 13:23 (CDT)
Re: Model-M keyboard, UK physical layout

Hi John, I just did the test and they're both coming up with the same code (42). Oh well, looks like I'll just have to live with it :) Thanks for your help!

Reply
"Joe Carroll", Mon, Jul 9, 2007 11:08 (CDT)
Mapping a non-modifier key as a modifier

I've just downloaded your Ukelele software (the most recent Universal beta) and was wondering if you'd be so kind as to answer a question I have regarding it's capabilities: is it possible to make a non-modifier key on a keyboard behave like a modifier key? Specifically, I want to switch the Ctrl and Help keys on an ergonomic keyboard I just bought (KeyOvation's Goldtouch for Mac), which is a great keyboard for my needs aside from the bizarre placement of a single Ctrl key in the very bottom left corner with the Help key between it and the Option key! (see http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c374/jgc78/?action=view&current=Crazykeyboardlayout.png) This is particularly impractical for me as I do quite a bit of work at the command line. Upon a quick perusal of Ukelele's documentation, the comments above and some experimentation with the app itself, it seems that this is unfortunately not possible. Can you confirm? If it is possible, could you briefly explain what I need to do? If it's not possible with Ukelele at the moment, would it be possible for you to add this feature to a future version of the software (it seems a lot of people want something similar), or could you recommend another tool to achieve this? Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Reply
"blahedo", Sat, Aug 25, 2007 21:14 (CDT)
Re: Mapping a non-modifier key as a modifier

Do you use your caps lock key for anything?  As has been mentioned above, Ukulele doesn't handle all the different remapping tasksâ��and in particular can't remap modifiersâ��but in the Keyboard control panel you *can*.  If you can retrain your little finger to search for the Control key just to the left of the A (which is more ergonomic anyway, Sun had this right years ago), that could resolve your problem.

Reply
"Josh", Wed, Jul 11, 2007 19:30 (CDT)
Fantastic Utility!

Just downloaded Ukulele today, and I am loving it!  It takes all of the guesswork out of building a custom keyboard layout!

My dream of Programmer Dvorak on a Mac will soon come to fruition!

My friends worry about me.

In other news, one feature I would love to see in a future version would be a standard entity checklist.  In other words, before I declare a keyboard layout to be 'finished', I'd love to be able to run a check that will tell me if my layout is missing any vital characters ("Whoops... completely forgot to add a 'q'!").

Thanks for your time.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Aug 27, 2007 05:39 (CDT)
Re: Fantastic Utility!

I'll put that in my list of features to work on. I have some ideas on how to implement it, but it probably won't make it for version 1.8.

Reply
"DamDam", Wed, Jul 18, 2007 22:18 (CDT)
Great Great Tool

Thank you so much for this neat utility. I'm just having a little question. I'm having a Japanese laptop keyboard and on the JIS layout the bottom-right key is supposed to be "\" unfortunately this key does return any key code. Is anybody in the knowing of a utility to find out code for keys when Ukelele doesn't return anything? Thanks

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Aug 27, 2007 05:46 (CDT)
Re: Great Great Tool

If the key doesn't produce a key code (in the key code window), then it is likely to be a modifier. As I understand it, JIS keyboards have some extra modifier keys used in composing Japanese characters. I don't think that Ukelele can help you with such keys. What happens if you double-click the key in the window?

Reply
"Dmitry", Fri, Aug 31, 2007 05:23 (CDT)
Input menu issue

Maybe a bit off-topic. I'm using a MBP with US keyboard. However, I also need some special characters, German umlauts and Russian. Therefore I've made two layouts: one is a modified U.S. layout with a few extra characters, and another is my own phonetic Russian layout. Now I want to have only these two and switch between them. However, I could not find a way how to disable the "standard"  U.S. layout, so instead of 2 layouts I always have 3... And some applications are switching to this stupid U.S. layout by themselves, causing me a lot of unnecessary effort to go with my mouse to the menu bar instead of just hitting the hot key.

Do you know how to shut the standard layout so that I have ONLY my two custom made?

Reply
"Philipp", Fri, Sep 21, 2007 05:02 (CDT)
Re: Input menu issue

Hi!

Take a look at

http://www.striber.dk/dinovo/

Seems OSX likes to switch back to an original apple layout once in a while - the fix is to turn one of your own layouts into an "original" one.

Regards

Reply
"Ruben Arslan", Sat, Sep 8, 2007 08:03 (CDT)
Forward backspace

Hello!

How can I tell Ukelele that backspace-key+alt-key means forward delete?

I tried a variety of approaches but never succeeded. Is alt-Backspace reserved?

Thanks,

Ruben

Reply
"John Brownie", Sat, Sep 15, 2007 22:05 (CDT) [modified by martinpk on Mon, Sep 17, 2007 06:26 (CDT)]
Re: Forward backspace

Have you tried making the output "&#x007f;"? That is the code for forward delete. If you set it to that, it should work.

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Oct 18, 2007 18:50 (CDT)
Re: Forward backspace

Having done a little more work, I see that option-backspace is actually part of the standard key bindings, which means that the system is intercepting it and interpreting it as "delete word backwards". Apparently, the only way to get around this is to edit the standard key bindings, which is not for the faint-hearted, since it involves modifying system files. Contact me if you want to go this route.

Reply
"ethan ", Wed, Nov 14, 2007 16:38 (CST)
Re: Forward backspace

I'm unable to get the forward delete 007f to work. No matter which key I assign it to (I'd like it to be assigned to the "Enter" key by the arrows). After saving and restarting the key will just act like the normal backspace.

Reply
"david toub", Tue, Oct 2, 2007 08:12 (CDT)
how to remove the Yen symbol from my new Apple extended keyboard

I've tried this with ukelele but haven't yet been successful, so I suspect I'm not doing it correctly. I have the new Apple aluminum keyboard and because of how the keys are set up, the side of my right hand often lightly depresses the option key on the right when I am typing and the y key turns into a yen symbol. Very annoying! I created a new layout in Ukelele (the latest version just downloaded yesterday) and replaced the yen symbol with the unicode for Y and saved that layout, but it didn't work. Any suggestions? Thanks!

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Oct 2, 2007 23:27 (CDT)
Re: how to remove the Yen symbol from my new Apple extended keyboard

You don't give a lot of information about what you did and what didn't work about it, so here are some general things:

- Make sure that you have saved the keyboard layout in the correct folder (often the Keyboard Layouts folder inside the Library folder in your home folder).

- Log out and log in (or restart the computer).

- Make sure that the keyboard layout is enabled in the Input Menu tab of International preferences (i.e. System Preferences, International pane).

- Select the keyboard layout from the input menu (the one with the flag).

You may also come across random switches to a different keyboard layout â�� see some options on getting around this in a message a few up from yours on this page.

If you still have problems, either post more details, or contact me by email. My address is in the Read Me file.

Reply
"Hal Segal", Wed, Oct 10, 2007 17:53 (CDT)
Changing the function of the Eject key on the new iMac wireless keyboard

I'm hoping to use Ukelele to change the functioning of a key I never use on the new iMac wireless keyboard, the Eject Media key, which is in the top right corner of the new keyboard, to the right of the F12 key.

However, this key does not show at all on the Ukelele layout using the USExtended choice. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks,

Hal

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Oct 11, 2007 19:06 (CDT)
Re: Changing the function of the Eject key on the new iMac wireless keyboard

You are not necessarily doing something wrong. There are some keys which can't actually be used as regular keys, and the media eject key is one of them, I think.

To find out if you could use it at all, show the key code window and press the key. If no key code appears in the window, then it's not generating a key code that the system can use. If it does show a key code, you can actually set output for the key by using the "Change other key..." command (not sure of the actual wording now â�� I'm not at my computer) and specifying the key code that you get.

Reply
"Hal Segal", Fri, Oct 12, 2007 07:19 (CDT)
How to get the keyboard modification to work?

I changed the function of a few keys and saved the layout, but the changes have not gone into effect. How do I get it started? The Getting Started and Tutorial pages don't seem to give this basic information, nor the Help section.

Thanks,

Hal

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Oct 12, 2007 17:46 (CDT)
Re: How to get the keyboard modification to work?

You say that you saved the layout. Did you save it to one of the Keyboard Layouts folders? Did you then log out and log in again (or restart the computer)? After doing so, did you open the International pane of System Preferences and enable the keyboard layout in the Input Menu tab?

If you've done all these steps and you still don't have the keyboard layout working, you can contact me directly (my email address is in the Read Me file), and I'll try to solve your problem.

Reply
"Fabio", Sat, Oct 27, 2007 18:11 (CDT)
Leopard

The application is fantastic!

It looks that there's a bug with Leopard. I've tried to create a new document and a new window flashes on screen: open and closes very fast. As soon as I have a chance I'll try on Tiger.

(I really would like to see an option to edit the physical layout as well, as some other users. :))

Thanks!

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Oct 29, 2007 17:51 (CDT)
Re: Leopard

I don't have Leopard yet, so can't test it myself. If Ukelele is not behaving, there might be some messages in the Console log. Start up the Console application (inside the Utilities folder in the Applications folder) and look for some lines that contain "Ukelele". If you do find some such lines, please either post them to this page, or send them directly to me (my email address is in the Read Me file), and I will try to see what can be done about it.

Reply
"Ice-nine", Tue, Oct 30, 2007 10:14 (CDT) [modified by martinpk on Tue, Nov 27, 2007 06:56 (CST)]
ukelele on 10.5

this part of console log (it's really long log):

30.10.07. 10:53:02 Ukelele[12280] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0xa0199470 of class NSCFString autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
Stack: (0x927c628f 0x926d3962 0x926dbeee 0x9093413e 0x90933f5f 0x90929d62 0x90929fe8 0x906b9c53 0x906b9610 0x906b8bf2 0x91c20b7e 0x91c20d38 0x906b18a4 0x907655a7 0x907652ae 0x9076520d 0x5782e 0x571b1 0x5060 0x22be 0x21e5)

30.10.07. 10:53:02 Ukelele[12280] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x392c80 of class NSPathStore2 autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
Stack: (0x927c628f 0x926d4b67 0x926dc5bf 0x926dc0be 0x926dbfc6 0x926e2068 0x90934154 0x90933f5f 0x90929d62 0x90929fe8 0x906b9c53 0x906b9610 0x906b8bf2 0x91c20b7e 0x91c20d38 0x906b18a4 0x907655a7 0x907652ae 0x9076520d 0x5782e 0x571b1 0x5060 0x22be 0x21e5)

30.10.07. 10:53:02 Ukelele[12280] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x3922e0 of class NSBundle autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
Stack: (0x927c628f 0x926d3962 0x90934154 0x90933f5f 0x90929d62 0x90929fe8 0x906b9c53 0x906b9610 0x906b8bf2 0x91c20b7e 0x91c20d38 0x906b18a4 0x907655a7 0x907652ae 0x9076520d 0x5782e 0x571b1 0x5060 0x22be 0x21e5)

30.10.07. 10:53:02 Ukelele[12280] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x394c10 of class NSPathStore2 autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
Stack: (0x927c628f 0x926d4b67 0x926d3c69 0x926de0e2 0x926ddf72 0x90934170 0x90933f5f 0x90929d62 0x90929fe8 0x906b9c53 0x906b9610 0x906b8bf2 0x91c20b7e 0x91c20d38 0x906b18a4 0x907655a7 0x907652ae 0x9076520d 0x5782e 0x571b1 0x5060 0x22be 0x21e5)

30.10.07. 10:53:02 Ukelele[12280] *** _NSAutoreleaseNoPool(): Object 0x3945e0 of class NSCFArray autoreleased with no pool in place - just leaking
Stack: (0x927c628f 0x926d3962 0x926f77a2 0x909341ba 0x90933f5f 0x90929d62 0x90929fe8 0x906b9c53 0x906b9610 0x906b8bf2 0x91c20b7e 0x91c20d38 0x906b18a4 0x907655a7 0x907652ae 0x9076520d 0x5782e 0x571b1 0x5060 0x22be 0x21e5)

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Oct 31, 2007 23:32 (CDT)
Re: ukelele on 10.5

That's helpful. Could you email me directly the whole console log - it might help me to work out what's happening.

Reply
"Milliardo", Mon, Nov 5, 2007 03:20 (CST)
Re: ukelele on 10.5

Another same symptom here. Using 10.5, Ukelete splash screen is ok, but "create new" one is not.

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Nov 5, 2007 04:39 (CST)
Re: ukelele on 10.5

Well, it appears that the system keyboard layouts are organised very differently in Leopard, so I need to try to find a way to do what worked in previous systems. I hope that I can get a version out soon. 1.8b4 does not fix this one, unfortunately.

Reply
"Chris", Fri, Nov 2, 2007 11:59 (CDT)
Ukelele keyboards

created under OS X.4 not working at all with Leopard. They are installed, but the flag icon doesn't show up in the drop down menu and regardless of which keyboard is selected, it justs defaualts to US English.

Reply
"Chris", Fri, Nov 2, 2007 13:20 (CDT)
Keyboard in Leopard

Scratch previous message. They are working now albeit the icon flags are not there.

Reply
"elliottw", Sun, Nov 4, 2007 08:59 (CST)
also having trouble in leopard

i have the the same problem where i cant get a new doc, but i can open an existing layout and modify it. the major problem is that leopard doesn't recognize the new layout completely. i can open a text doc and type with the new layout, but i can't type in spot light or other os features.

Reply
"mmike", Tue, Nov 6, 2007 09:54 (CST)
Ukelele installation on Leopard

I amjust considering switching to Mac from PC and wanted to make sure I can do custom keyboard layouts (a dealbreaker for me).

At the apple store, with the help of a Mac specialist, we tried installing Ukelele last night (November 5, 2007) and got nowhere.  It would just blink and disappear.  Please help.

Reply
"IndrekSiitan", Fri, Nov 9, 2007 06:38 (CST)
"Replace all" key combo not working in BBEdit

After the upgrade to Leopard, the modified US keyboard I had created back in the 10.3 days, stopped working for some reason. With what I created it, I don't even remember.

In any case, I stumbled upon Ukelele after some Googling, downloaded it and re-created my keyboard layout. I based it off of the standard US keyboard layout bundled with Ukelele and added Â§ as a dead key so I can quickly produce the accented characters in Estonian (Â§a for Ã¤, Â§u for Ã¼, etc).

Now everything works fine, EXCEPT that in BBEdit's search & replace dialogue, the keyboard shortcut for "Replace All", which is alt-cmd-R, does not work. The rest of the shortcuts, that are plain cmd-letter ones, do work.

In, for example, Fireworks, the menu shortcut for enabling/disabling rules, which is also alt-cmd-R, does work.

BareBones (makers of BBEdit) helped me trace it down to a point where it's indeed a problem with my keyboard layout - the shortcut works properly with all the system layouts bundled with Leopard. At that point, they let me go and asked to be kept in the loop in case I find a solution. :)

Any ideas what might be causing this anomaly?

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Nov 9, 2007 13:51 (CST)
Re: \"Replace all\" key combo not working in BBEdit

I'm not sure what the problem is. Could you send me the keyboard layout by email (my address is in the Read Me file), and I will have a look at it.

In the meantime, does it fail for all non-Apple keyboard layouts? You could try creating a keyboard layout which is one of those that came with Ukelele, without any modifications apart from the name. For example, create a keyboard layout as a copy of the US (or US Extended) keyboard, only changing the name (so that you can find it in the Input Menu list). If that works, then it is probably your keyboard layout. If it doesn't, it may be that Apple has a bug somewhere.

Reply
"Leslie Turek", Mon, Nov 12, 2007 06:16 (CST)
Workaround for Ukelele/Leopard

In regard to not being about to modify existing keyboards... Would it be a workaround to run Ukelele under Tiger, make a keyboard based on a system keyboard with no changes and output it. Then input that file into the Leopard Ukelele and go from there?

If this is feasible, it would be helpful if someone could do this and make at least the U.S. Extended keyboard available in this way.

Reply
"Leslie Turek", Mon, Nov 12, 2007 10:13 (CST)
Never mind - I can use samples included with download

Sorry, I'm a little slow sometimes...

Reply
"AT", Mon, Nov 19, 2007 22:16 (CST)
On Leopard, can I switch a couple of letters around in the Russian-Phonetic layout

Hello dear author and all.

I have just gotten my first Mac and it has Leopard. I come from the Windows experience where I use a Russian phonetic keyboard. The idea is the same as with Mac's Russian-Phonetic keyboard, but six or so letters are in different places and it's killing me.  I need to "customize" Mac's layout to my liking.  Is this doable?

I am reading about all the "does not work with Leopard", "can't install" and "feature unavailable" comments and just trying to figure out what I can try and what I should expect.  I have downloaded Ukelele 1.8b5, but have not installed it yet.

Reply
"jJohn Brownie", Wed, Nov 21, 2007 03:09 (CST)
Re: On Leopard, can I switch a couple of letters around in the Russian-Phonetic layout

The current beta version of Ukelele works correctly on Leopard, with no known issues. Earlier versions mostly worked, though not the New... dialog.

The only feature that is disabled in Leopard is creating a keyboard layout based on a system keyboard layout, which was available in the New... dialog. All the system keyboard layouts available on earlier versions of Mac OS X (up to at least 10.4.10) are provided with Ukelele, so this only means that you have to create a new keyboard layout by opening a copy of one of these.

Reply
"AT", Mon, Nov 26, 2007 23:10 (CST)
Re: On Leopard, can I switch a couple of letters around in the Russian-Phonetic layout

You're a genius.  Done!  Ð¡Ð¿Ð°Ñ�Ð¸Ð±Ð¾.

Reply
"Krishna Rao Maddipati", Wed, Nov 28, 2007 07:06 (CST)
How to use a Perl generated Keyboard layout to Mac OS

Someone created a Keyboard layout file for Telugu using Perl. Is there a way to use the files with .pl extension to generate a Mac OS keyboard layout without having to redo all over again? I know very little about programming but want to create a QWERTY keyboard layout for Telugu. These layouts exist for PCs. It looks like all the resources are around but no one is interested in creating one for Mac. Any guidance and help will be appreciated.

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Nov 29, 2007 00:09 (CST) [modified by jonathan on Tue, Jun 24, 2008 15:07 (CDT)]
Re: How to use a Perl generated Keyboard layout to Mac OS

What kind of keyboard layouts does the Perl script generate? If they are for Windows or Linux, or anything other than Mac OS X, then it won't be easy to make it create one for Mac OS X, especially if you're not a programmer.

So, your choices are to create your own with Ukelele or KeyLayoutMaker (or the web-based tool at http://wordherd.com/keyboards/), or to look for an existing keyboard layout and adapt it with Ukelele.

I know of two current locations for Telugu keyboard layouts, though not QWERTY Telugu:

http://homepage.mac.com/thgewecke/tckbs.html is a free layout by Tom Gewecke.

http://www.xenotypetech.com/osxTelugu.html is a commercial layout by XenoType Technologies.

http://web.nickshanks.com/typography/telugu/ also has fonts, and he is apparently developing a Telugu keyboard layout.

Reply
"Krishna Rao Maddipati", Sat, Dec 1, 2007 13:00 (CST)
Re: How to use a Perl generated Keyboard layout to Mac OS

I don't think I stated my question accurately before.

What is needed for Telugu typing on Mac is actually a transliteration program. On PCs there are several transliteration applications available. Basically, if you type Telugu phonetically using Roman script, the program interprets the typed text and displays the Unicode glyphs. Many of these are web based. One example of this is Lekhini (http://lekhini.org/). You type the phonetic expression in English in the upper box and the Telugu script appears in the lower window (either on the fly or one word at a time, i.e. when you hit the spacebar, comma, or a period, etc.). This  works on the browser regardless of the platform. You can then copy the transliterated text and past in TextEdit or any other Unicode compatible application. A transliteration application was written by someone in Perl script and is available freely (http://search.cpan.org/~syamal/Unicode-Indic-0.01/lib/Unicode/Indic/Telugu.pm). Now my question is, can this transliteration script be adapted for Mac? I realize that I may asking too much or too ignorant questions! I'm just frustrated that a facility so prevalent on PCs is not available on Mac for Telugu. Thank you again for even reading through all this!

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 2, 2007 21:46 (CST)
Re: How to use a Perl generated Keyboard layout to Mac OS

I think that the answer is going to be that you can't do this with just a keyboard layout. What you need is an input method, which is something for a programmer to do, not something that Ukelele can help with. Apple provides some input methods for Chinese, Japanese and Korean, and there are others available on the Internet. Unfortunately, I don't know of any for Telugu.

Reply
"Michael Bleistein", Thu, Nov 29, 2007 09:45 (CST)
Unable to install keyboard layouts on Mac OS Leopard

We are trying to install a keyboard layout under Mac OS Leopard but the system seems not to accept it.

The symptoms are that when we select the new layout in the "International" panel, the standard US keyboard layout checkmark of Leopard remains grayed out, the checkmark of the new layout is solid black. Typing shows that the new keyboard layout is not effective.

This happens with our own layout and the standard layouts supplied with Ukelele!

The console window does not show error mesages.

Greetings

Michael

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Nov 30, 2007 21:00 (CST)
Re: Unable to install keyboard layouts on Mac OS Leopard

I have custom keyboards working correctly in Leopard, so it is something on your system. To verify that, try creating a new user account, install the keyboard layouts in that, log in to the new account and see if they work.

Having said that, I don't know what would be causing keyboard layouts not to work. I believe that there are some problems with Input Managers in Leopard, but you'd need to find some more information elsewhere on that. What you will need to do is to try to remove whatever custom software is on your computer, see if the keyboard layouts are working, and then add things back until something breaks it. Not much fun, but about all you can do.

Reply
"Christoph", Thu, Nov 29, 2007 13:00 (CST)
Recreate Numpad on late 2007 MacBooks

Hello,

is it possible to recreate the functionality of the Numpad the former MacBooks had, using Ukelele?

What I don't need is the "Numpad" Button itself, but e.g. the fn+j for 1(numpad) or fn+u for 4(numpad). What won't help me, is to use the number keys originally provided, as I need the numpad for a very special application I am using with Parallels and WindowsXP. Now, with the new MacBook, I have a problem ...

If there is a solution, could please someone tell me?

Thanks a lot,

Christoph

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Nov 30, 2007 21:31 (CST)
Re: Recreate Numpad on late 2007 MacBooks

I haven't seen these latest MacBooks, but I see that they don't advertise an embedded keypad. Do they have an fn key? If they do, it's probably worth trying to see if it can make the keys produce a different key code. Open Ukelele, show the Key Code window, and try pressing j and then fn+j, and see if there are different numbers shown in the Key Code window. The j key should be 38, and fn+j 83, if the embedded keypad is available.

If the fn key doesn't give you different key codes, then you'll have to try a different approach, such as making the keys behave as a keypad when the caps lock key is down, for instance. That can easily be done in Ukelele.

Reply
"Bill", Mon, Dec 31, 2007 13:50 (CST)
Re: Recreate Numpad on late 2007 MacBooks (and Aluminum wireless kbds)

This problem also afflicts the new aluminum wireless keyboards. Both it and the Macbook keyboards have a Fn key.

Creating a "New..." Ukelele layout using the "based on System keyboard layout" option creates a layout which shows the embedded numpad keys when Fn is held down - that is Fn+U changes to 4, Fn+I changes to 5, etc, and Fn+arrow keys changes to Home, End, etc, just as on the MacBook Pro keyboards and earlier Powerbook and iBook keyboards.

However, using the Ukelele KeyCode window shows that only a few of the Fn+keys actually emit a different keycode. The ones that I see working are

Fn+ any of the arrow keys (emits Home, End, Page Up & Page Down)

Fn+Return (emits Enter key). The other embedded numpad keys emit the same keycode regardless of the Fn key state.

Also, F1-F4 & F7-F12 do not emit keycodes at all unless Fn is down. F5 & F6 are unaffected by Fn.

In summary, I can find no keys which emit different keycodes when Fn is down, other than the 4 arrow keys and Return.

(RANT)This is quite annoying in music programs such as Sibelius, MOTU Digital Performer, and Digidesign ProTools, as these (and many others) make heavy use of the numeric keypad. These apps typically have MANY key commands, and there really aren'tany open keys to transfer these functions to.

For example, in Sibelius, the numpad is used to change note durations. Formerly you could very rapidly enter music on Apple laptop keyboards without dragging along an external keypad, by typing note letter names and numbers (for musical intervals above and below the last entered note), and using Fn to select the time value (quarter note, eighth note, etc).

Now it doesn't work. Hard to imagine why Apple would remove this function - you' think it would also hamstring their own media editing apps like Logic. Admittedly many people never used the embedded numpad. But for those who DO use it, it's a deal breaker and makes the MacBook and Aluminum Wireless keyboards useless...I bought the wireless one for use with Sibelius, and while I love it - it wipes out note entry.

(/RANT)

Well, now that I feel better... one thing I don't understand is that pressing Fn on the Aluminum wireless keyboard -does- cause the key layout display in Ukelele to show the proper numpad keys. So something coming from the keyboard is different.

So, shouldn't it still be possible to make a layout that would output keypad4 in place of Fn+U, etc? Using CapsLock to get these keypad keys isn't going to work in these kinds of apps. For example, like Sibelius, MOTU Performer already assigns important commands to nearly all the lower case alpha keys, and to many if not most of the Shift-alpha keys...as well

as just about every other combination of Command, Option and Control keys.

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Jan 3, 2008 14:05 (CST)
Re: Recreate Numpad on late 2007 MacBooks (and Aluminum wireless kbds)

The reason that Ukelele displays an embedded keypad is what I'd call a bug. I have built into it the assumption that, if a keyboard has a fn key, then it has the same set of combinations as all other keyboards with a fn key. Obviously, that's no longer the case, so I need to work on that, and identify exactly what fn-combinations are available on each kind of keyboard.

So I'm sorry, but Ukelele is actually misleading you on this issue! Although you can edit what would appear on the keypad if you had one, you can't actually make your keyboard behave as if it had one.

The function keys usually have two types of function. The default with current versions of OS X is that they control hardware functions without fn, so that the key presses never get to an application. To get the function key, you need to press the fn key as well â�� for example, triggering Spaces or ExposÃ© requires fn to be pressed. That can be changed in System Preferences, Keyboard & Mouse pane, Keyboard tab.

Reply
"Fred", Mon, Jan 7, 2008 03:08 (CST)
Re: Recreate Numpad on late 2007 MacBooks

I couldn't get it to work, and a little digging by a Apple Care specialist revealed that the embedded numpad is removed on a hardware level and is not expected to return. Thus FN+F6 does nothing, I have left feedback for Apple but they still include embedded numpad in the specification of Late 2007 MacBooks all over the web.

I had to look elsewhere, since my application (run under VMWare fusion) required a numpad.

Reply
"John Ghadimi", Wed, Dec 12, 2007 19:40 (CST)
Mapping Help Key to Control..how??

Hi,

The keyboard I am using (an ergonomic keyboard by GoldTouch) has for some strange reason put the help key next to the Ctrl key.  This is very problematic, since the location of the help key is where Ctrl should be!  So, I'm constantly hitting the help key when designing in photoshop or other apps. I would love to be able to map the help key to Ctrl.  Can I do this?  In the help, it states:

"To make a key behave like a control key, you need to enter the right hexadecimal code.".  How do I find the hex code for the control key?  Any help or guidance is appreciated.

John

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Dec 14, 2007 22:07 (CST)
Re: Mapping Help Key to Control..how??

You can't do it, I'm afraid. When the manual talks about control keys, it means keys that aren't alphanumeric or symbol keys, that do things like enter, return, backspace, home, left, and so on. The ctrl key is a modifier key, like shift, option, command. The two types of keys are distinct.

You can't change the help key into a modifier key (such as the ctrl key). There's just no support for such a change at the level of creating a keyboard layout. Such a change would have to be done at a lower level, like a keyboard driver.

Reply
"kogalurshear", Thu, Jan 3, 2008 18:47 (CST)
Carbon Emacs and the Control Key

Has anyone encountered an issue with CTRL-together-with-another-key not working as expected on some applications.  For example, on Carbon Emacs the CTRL-X combination requires that I use the original X key where it used to be before my re-mapping.

I'm using a modified Dvorak mapping.    When I use the Dvorak keyboard under the "System Preferences -> International" menu, things work fine.  All CTRL-key combinations work great.  It's only when I use Ukelele that I experience the  problem.

Thanks!

ksc

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jan 4, 2008 16:27 (CST)
Re: Carbon Emacs and the Control Key

Have you changed the key output for control-X to be the same as control-X would produce on the Dvorak layout? It should be the hex value 0018. You need to enter &#x0018; to get that (I hope that turns out correctly on the web site!).

I haven't tried this myself, and there are some problems with control key combinations at the best of times, but it should hopefully work.

Reply
"kogalurshear", Sun, Jan 6, 2008 10:07 (CST)
Re: Carbon Emacs and the Control Key

Thanks John,

Interestingly, I used the Dvorak template provided in Ukelele.  So all the CTRL mappings are fine.  The CTRL mappings even work fine in other applications I've looked at.  CTRL-X works as expected in a terminal, for example.  I would blame Carbon Emacs, but the Mac OS X Dvorak keyboard provided under System -> International works with Carbon Emacs fine.  So it's something to do with the way the mappings are implemented by Ukelele.  I'm wondering if looking at the XML code for the Ukelele mapping and the Mac OS X mapping might provide some clues.  Or perhaps this is even deeper than that.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.  If you can point me in a particular direction, I'll be happy to pursue it.  All I need are some technical details as to the implementation used in Ukelele.

ksc

Reply
"rob", Sun, Jan 6, 2008 22:42 (CST)
multi key inputs

I am using the SIL YI font and trying to build an input keyboard for mac.

I want the combination of "dead key" + "a" + "p" to give me a glyph associated with "ap".

Is this possible?

thanks so much!

Reply
"Jonathan", Mon, Jan 7, 2008 03:28 (CST)
Re: multi key inputs

In theory, you could do this by defining LOTS of dead keys in Ukelele; e.g., "a" would be a dead key, with "p" as a completer generating the "ap" character, and many, many others. But it would be a huge undertaking to handle the entire Yi script this way.

For a case like this, have a look at KeyLayoutMaker:, a tool that was designed to simplify the construction of layouts with hundreds of dead-key pairs or sequences. The download even includes a sample input file for a Yi layout, which you may be able to adapt to your needs.

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Thu, Jan 24, 2008 09:17 (CST)
Unicode Plane 1 Layouts

I built a Kharosthi layout, everything is fine with Ukelele, but Keyboard Viewer won't show the font for this or any other Plane 1 script (10.5.0).  Any fix known for this?

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Mon, Feb 11, 2008 18:51 (CST)
Re: Unicode Plane 1 Layouts

This bug seems to be fixed in 10.5.2

Reply
"Carl Edlund Anderson", Sun, Jan 27, 2008 17:35 (CST)
Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

I've used Ukelele on and off for several years making specialized keylayouts for different languages and scripts — fantastic app! :)

I've just run into a problem that looks similar to others reported here.  A new keylayout I've made isn't showing up in the System Prefs > International > Input Menu list.  Other keylayouts I've made in the past with Ukelele are fine; they're still there.  Just the new one isn't showing up.

This doesn't really seem like a Ukelele issue — probably more an Apple one!  But perhaps someone here has an idea of what's wrong?

The only think I can think of is that the new keylayout is essentially my own "remix" for inputing polytonic Greek and so uses numerous characters from Unicode's "Greek Extended" block.  None of the previous keylayouts I've made with Ukelele have done so (I don't think they've used characters from blocks "higher" than the regular "Greek and Coptic" or Cyrillic blocks. I wouldn't think the "higher" block should make a difference, but maybe it does?  (Though of course, the default Greek Polytonic keyboard layout works fine — I just wanted to make my own ;)

I've been using both Ukelele 1.8b3 and most recently 1.8b5 on an Intel Mac mini running 10.4.11.

Reply
"", Mon, Jan 28, 2008 17:43 (CST)
Re: Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

Another thought — could this be some weird keyboard ID issue?  I know conflicts are supposed to be resolved dynamically by the OS, but ....

Still stumped on this one! :P

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Jan 28, 2008 19:08 (CST)
Re: Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

It's unlikely to be an ID conflict. You may find more clues in the console log, which you can look at with the Console application (Applications > Utilities). You can send me the keyboard layout by email (compressed with StuffIt or zip or something) and I'll have a look at it, too. My email address is in the Read Me file.

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Mon, Jan 28, 2008 22:06 (CST)
Re: Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

If you send me a copy I'll see if it works for me (tom at bluesky dot org).

Reply
"Carl Edlund Anderson", Tue, Jan 29, 2008 15:29 (CST)
Re: Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

Thanks John, Tom — I've emailed you the problem keylayout and another Ukelele-made keylayout that _is_ behaving properly.  Perhaps you can see where I've gone wrong!

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Jan 29, 2008 17:48 (CST)
Re: Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

The problem appears to be caused by dead key state names that are numbers. For some reason, the keyboard compiler can get confused with them and refuse to accept the keyboard layout, but only in some cases.

The solution is to change state names that are just numbers to something else, so change state "1" to "s1" or something like that. It can be done from within Ukelele, via the "Change State Name..." command.

I will try to make an automatic fix for this in the next release.

Reply
"Carl Edlund Anderson", Tue, Jan 29, 2008 18:16 (CST)
Re: Keyboard layout not appearing in Input Menu

Thanks John (& Tom)!  I can confirm that remaining the state names to something other than plain numerals has fixed the problem. :)

Reply
"Rostyslav Khomenko", Sun, Feb 3, 2008 07:25 (CST)
New layout does not work in Word:Mac 2008 (Leopard)

I've done a new layout and installed it fine. It works well in Safari, but for some strange reason it does not work in Word for Mac. The program just does not respond to the keys.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Ros

Reply
"Ed", Tue, Jul 28, 2009 22:06 (CDT)
Re: New layout does not work in Word:Mac 2008 (Leopard)

I am having this same problem too and I can't find a response to this problem.  My keyboard layout works in Firefox, but not in Word:Mac 2008.  Is there any update to this problem?

Reply
"DaveC", Thu, Feb 28, 2008 17:37 (CST)
"Function" modifier key

I open a keyboard layout file and see it includes the Fn modifier key. When I press it the key highlights on the map.

When I open the Modifiers window (Shift-Cmd-M) the Fn key isn't listed as one of the modifiers.

How do I go about creating a new key combination that includes the Fn modifier key if it's not included in this list?

Thanks,

Dave

OS X 10.5.2

Ukelele 1.8b5

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 3, 2008 17:40 (CST)
Re: \"Function\" modifier key

The fn key is not really a modifier in the sense that shift, option, command, caps lock and control are modifiers. It rather serves to convert keys on a keyboard into other keys that are not present on that keyboard, so creating a number pad on a laptop keyboard. For those keys that don't have a second character printed on them to indicate their function with fn down, fn does nothing.

Also, in Apple's scheme of keyboard layouts, only shift, option, command, caps lock and control are counted as modifiers. That means that you couldn't create another modifier combination including fn even if it made any sense.

Reply
"Uffe Jakobsen", Thu, Mar 6, 2008 14:46 (CST)
XML (.keylayout) files from binary Apple keylayout files ?

Hi

Is it possible to generate XML keylayout files from binary Apple keylayout files on Mac OS X 10.5.x ?

Kind Ragards Uffe Jakobsen

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Mar 6, 2008 19:13 (CST)
Re: XML (.keylayout) files from binary Apple keylayout files ?

I don't know of a way to do it. They are not resource files, so Apple's tools don't work on them. The two files are identical, just with different byte orders, -B having big endian, and -L having little endian. Someone could perhaps reverse engineer the format, but I don't have the skills for that. Alternatively, ask someone at Apple.

Reply
"Uffe Jakobsen", Fri, Mar 7, 2008 07:21 (CST)
Re: XML (.keylayout) files from binary Apple keylayout files ?

Ok thanks for your answer.

Here is what I'm trying to do:

I'm using an Apple ALU keyboard and wish to remap a few number of keys/chars - so that the keyboard layout is more like my pc keyboard layout - switching between them makes me crazy. Since I don't want to build up the total keylayout from ground and up - it would be nice if I could grab the (apparently binary) keylayout shipped by Apple and just remap the few keys that are "wrong".

Is it in any way possible to use the Apple layouts as a foundation (start) in Ukelele ?

Kind regards Uffe Jakobsen

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Mar 12, 2008 19:51 (CDT)
Re: XML (.keylayout) files from binary Apple keylayout files ?

You can use the system keyboard layouts that are supplied with Ukelele. Since the 10.5 versions are not accessible (I still haven't worked out what the file format is), all the keyboard layouts supplied with 10.4.10 are available in the System Keyboards folder. The Unicode folder was missing up to the latest release (1.8b6), but is there now.

The easiest way to use one of the system keyboard layouts is to choose the option "Copy of other keyboard layout" in the New dialog, and then open one of the files from the System Keyboards folder supplied with Ukelele.

Reply
"Laurier Doucet", Mon, Mar 10, 2008 07:13 (CDT)
IBM-SK-8809 CSA Keyboard

Hi

I am trying to use this IBM-SK-8809 with my two Macs: one G4 running Tiger and one G5 running Leopard. It responds correctly except fot two keys even though the layout is exactly the same as my Apple French-Canadian keyboard. In fact, when I type a " Ã¹" I get a "/ " and when I type a " / " I get a " Ã¹ " .

Can Yukelele make this keyboard respond the way it is laid out when used with a Mac? I would love to use it.

Thanks

Reply
"Christian", Wed, Mar 12, 2008 08:59 (CDT)
Thanks!

Thats excactly what I was looking for!

http://utechristian.wordpress.com

Reply
"Sami J. Lehtinen", Mon, Mar 17, 2008 18:27 (CDT)
Works perfectly after log off/log in

At first, I was at a loss when my created layout correctly appeared in the International tree, but didn't work at all with already open applications (except for Keyboard Viewer and Ukelele itself). After actually following the directions and logging off and logging in again, things work perfectly.

Any idea why the system needs this kind of "reboot"? I've been using a Mac for about 6 hours now, and I was kinda getting used to the whole "changes to preferences take effect immediately" thing :)

Thanks for the great software, really helped my mac experience along :)

//sjl

Reply
"Paolo", Wed, Oct 1, 2008 20:36 (CDT)
Re: Works perfectly after log off/log in

Unfortunately, this does not work for me (under Tiger). I switch to a second user, choose the new layout. It appears selected, but it does not work.

I logout, then login again. The chosen layout is reset to the default layout.

Reply
"Chuck Smith", Sat, Apr 26, 2008 03:00 (CDT)
easier interface with single-click

Just wanted to say that it would be easier to use if you could just single-click instead of double-clicking to edit keys.  Sorry for short message, but switched to Dvorak yesterday. :)

Reply
"tench", Thu, May 1, 2008 05:24 (CDT)
control + alt as modifier

i'd like to assign one letter to a key with control+alt modifers, and another to cntrl+alt+shift (captial letter), but whatever i assign to control+alt is copied to control+alt+shift, and vice versa. why is it not possible to separate these two? i am using the latest version of ukelele

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, May 9, 2008 05:53 (CDT)
Re: control + alt as modifier

There are two possible sources of this problem:

1. Both control + option and control + shift + option are mapped the same. In this case, you need to create a new modifier combination. Choose Show Modifiers, and create a new set. Instructions are in the manual.

2. It may be that you have a linked pair of keys, where changing one automatically changes the other. You can unlink keys now, and, again, the instructions are in the manual.

I hope that makes enough sense for you to find an answer.

Reply
"Regis", Tue, May 6, 2008 11:06 (CDT)
French iso keyboard

Hi,

I try to remap a french PC keyboard.

When i hit the upper left key, ukulele show the key between "shift" and "w" if i push this key it show the (Âµ/*) key stroked.

Is there a reason?

I have un adaptater ps2 to usb which work fine on PC.

And a last question how can i change the "top" and "bottom" keys (left to page up/down) to start and end of the line functionnality.

Regards.

RÃ©gis

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, May 9, 2008 06:06 (CDT)
Re: French iso keyboard

I don't quite understand your first question. It sounds as though you have a mismatch between the keyboard type you are using in Ukelele (via Set Keyboard Typeâ�¦ in the Keyboard menu) and the physical keyboard that you are using. In other words, the arrangement of keys on the screen doesn't match the arrangement of keys on your keyboard. That's likely to be caused by having a non-Apple keyboard, which means that you won't get a perfect match automatically. You can try to find a better match by experimenting with different keyboard types.

Changing the top and bottom keys to home and end may not work well, as explained in the manual. For this reason, the control key codes haven't been included in the latest version of the manual. Home has code 0001, and end has code 0004, which are entered with the XML notation starting with an ampersand (&), then #, the number, and then a semicolon (;).

Ask again if you need more information. I can be contacted by email, and my address is in the Read Me file.

Reply
"Ayhan", Sat, May 24, 2008 16:36 (CDT)
Can't save new keyboard layout in Ukelele

I have created a new keyboard layout based on the Logitech French keyboard layout that comes with Ukelele. I am able to modify the keyboard mappings without a problem.

However, when I try to save the new keyboard layout, the "save" button is grayed out. Impossible to save the newly created layout. I have tried "save" and "save as" but both give the same result.

I am sure that I have sufficient write permissions in the folder that I am trying to save, which is my home folder. I am able to save there with other applications.

Could someone please help?

Reply
"John Brownie", Sat, May 24, 2008 18:00 (CDT)
Re: Can\'t save new keyboard layout in Ukelele

I've never seen this problem myself. Are you able to save it in a different folder? Perhaps in /Users/Shared?

Otherwise, you could check that the permissions are correct. They should be 755 for the application bundle, and also for the executable (Ukelele.app/Contents/MacOS/Ukelele).

Beyond that, I don't have much idea what's going wrong.

Reply
"rahji", Wed, Jun 4, 2008 18:45 (CDT)
"Based on system keyboard layout" disabled?

Is there a way that I can just change one key mapping without going through the whole process of creating a layout?  I tried basing one on the US layout that comes with Ukelele but I immediately noticed that some CMD+key combinations weren't working.  I'm guessing what I want is the "Based on system keyboard layout" option that appears when I create a new layout in Ukelele, but it's always disabled/greyed-out.  What I'm trying to do is map the CLEAR key to the CAPSLOCK key (or even better.. disable the CLEAR key altogether).  The reason for this is my USB numeric keypad prepends and appends a CLEAR (what it thinks is NUMLUCK since it's designed for Windows) before each number keypress.  eg: pressing the number 7 on the keypad sends NUMLOCK+7+NUMLOCK to the mac (which is really CLEAR+7+CLEAR).  Pretty messy.  I want it to send nothing+7+nothing or at least CAPSLOCK+7+CAPSLOCK.  I'm trying to do this without changing anything else in my keyboard layout.  If there were already editable XML layouts in the OS, I'm guessing I wouldn't need something like Ukelele to do this, but of course they're not there.  Thanks for any help.  Rob

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Jun 5, 2008 17:26 (CDT)
Re: \"Based on system keyboard layout\" disabled?

"Based on system keyboard layout" is not available in 10.5 (Leopard), due to Apple changing the format that the system keyboard layouts are provided. However, all the keyboard layouts from 10.4 (Tiger) are provided with the current version of Ukelele. Choose "Copy of other keyboard layout", and then open your desired keyboard layout from the System Keyboards folder that is on the Ukelele disk image.

You won't be able to turn Clear into Caps Lock, since Clear is not a modifier key, but Caps Lock is. Your problem with the number pad may not be something that can be fixed with Ukelele. It is likely at a driver level that the Clear is being added, and the keyboard layouts that Ukelele produces operate at a higher level.

Reply
"Paolo", Wed, Oct 1, 2008 20:39 (CDT)
Re: \\"Based on system keyboard layout\\" disabled?

"all the keyboard layouts from 10.4 (Tiger) are provided with the current version of Ukelele"

Actually, the Italian layouts are missing from the list. Do you want I create them, and them to you?

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 19:47 (CST)
Re: "Based on system keyboard layout" disabled?

The Italian keyboard layouts are there, but they are in the Roman folder, not the Unicode folder.

Reply
"Bornhall", Mon, Jun 16, 2008 03:56 (CDT)
Shortcuts stopped working...

Hi there, nice app, think it might solve one of my problems converting from Windows to Mac.

However, I do have a problem. I loaded up the Swedish keyboard layout in Ukulele and mapped superscript 2 and 3 to Alt+Numpad-2 and Alt+Numpad-3 respectively. Saved it to ~/user/Library/Keyboard Layouts, selected it in preferences and tested it. The new keybindings worked fine, but then I noticed that â��-w for closing windows had stopped working. Switching back to normal keyboard layout and it worked again.

Am I doing something wrong here? I weren't really prepared to sacrifice my shortcuts for this, if you know what I mean. :)

Any help here is appreciated.

Reply
"David Cottle", Thu, Sep 17, 2009 19:17 (CDT)
Re: Shortcuts stopped working...

I had a similar issue: This worked great for remapping the sharp, flat, and natural signs to an opt-s, d, and f. I've wanted a solution for typing accidentals quickly in text for a long time. But in Sibelius all the shortcuts that use control or option are broken. Even if I try to reset them, the input dialog shows bizarre combinations when I type a shortcut. Opt-g shows shift, control, copyright symbol.

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Sep 20, 2009 20:39 (CDT)
Re: Shortcuts stopped working...

I'm not sure what is happening here. It would seem to be a problem with Sibelius rather than anything else. I'm not familiar with the program myself, but some programs like that are badly behaved in that they more or less assume a standard keyboard layout, and work with the key codes rather than interpreting the output of the keyboard driver. There's not much that can be done if that is the problem. It's a problem with some of Apple's programs, too!

Reply
"Emerson", Wed, Jun 18, 2008 14:13 (CDT)
letter works with diactritic, but not without!

I made a simple keylayout based on the standard US keyboard. I added grave:0300 and accute:0301 accent deadkeys (just like the spanish keyboard) assigned to the "[" and "]" keys, and I needed one new vowel: the caret (lowercase:028C uppercase:039B) which I assigned to the "v" key. Every combination works fine in TextEdit, but in Excel I can ONLY get accented caret and never the caret by its self. I can cut and past them into cells, but I can't type it in manually. I've tried with both SIL and Helvetica fonts. This has me stumped.

Reply
"Emerson", Thu, Jun 19, 2008 10:58 (CDT)
Re: letter works with diactritic, but not without!

One more detail that might be relevant. I just discovered that I can generate the accented turned-v, and then delete the accent (leaving only the turned-v with no accent), but not input it directly. Still scratching my head.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jun 20, 2008 23:06 (CDT)
Re: letter works with diactritic, but not without!

Have you added Ê� and Î� to your keyboard layout without them being a dead key combination? Are they replacing v and V respectively? Without more explanation, it's hard to know exactly what is going wrong.

If you get stuck, feel free to send me a copy of your keyboard layout, and I can try to help. My email address is in the Read Me file.

Reply
"emerson", Mon, Jun 23, 2008 20:06 (CDT)
Re: letter works with diactritic, but not without!

That's exactly what I did. I made them replace v and V respectively (using the shift key to make the capital). I will email you a copy of the layout.

Reply
"Tom Gewecke", Wed, Jun 25, 2008 12:23 (CDT)
Apple/Command key problem

When I modify the main keyboard, it seems to change all the keys for Apple/Command as well.  How can I have them stay as Latin?

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Jun 25, 2008 22:16 (CDT)
Re: Apple/Command key problem

It's likely that the basic set of modifiers is set to be no modifiers or just the command key. If that's the case, then you need to edit that modifier combination to remove the command option, and then create a new modifier combination with the command key. You can either set it to be the basic Latin (QWERTY) layout, or copy one of your existing sets.

Reply
"Tobias", Wed, Jul 16, 2008 07:42 (CDT)
Tiger Roman.bundle hack to mask as first-class layout

Could someone elaborate on what's mentioned above? ("input source change in Safari")

I did manage to get two U.S. entries in International.prefPane, but they were both the original layout. Since that's in .rsrc and mine's .keylayout it's complicated to remove.

Reply
"Renan de Araujo", Fri, Jul 25, 2008 01:29 (CDT)
Is it possible to disable Ctrl+click from secondary click with this software?

I need to disable Ctrl+click as secondary click in order to work on some softwares on Windows using Fusion(which is a software that runs windows inside the Mac os, for those that don't know it).

I need to be able to press ctrl and be able to click as a regular click in order for certain things to work properly, and since I already have the two finger click enabled, I don't really need ctrl+click.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Jul 25, 2008 02:58 (CDT)
Re: Is it possible to disable Ctrl+click from secondary click with this software?

No, Ukelele doesn't affect control-click.

Have you looked at this thread on the Apple bulletin boards?

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1520841&tstart=487

It seems to imply that Fusion should enable you to disable the control-click contextual menu. Alternatively, try the mouse driver they mention.

Reply
"Renan de Araujo", Fri, Jul 25, 2008 04:38 (CDT)
Re: Is it possible to disable Ctrl+click from secondary click with this software?

Thanks for your answer.

Unfortunately, unchecking that option in fusio, also makes me lose the ability to midle-click which is also essencial. Either you have, both or you have none.

About the driver, IÂ´m not sure it would work since iÂ´m using the trackpad.

Reply
"", Thu, Aug 28, 2008 16:28 (CDT)
Simple Question

Hello All,

Just installed Ukelele. Where are the 'included' keyboard layouts? I want to change a few letters in the polytonic Greek keyboard, but can't find any of the keyboard layouts...Probably right under my nose. Can someone direct me?

P

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Aug 31, 2008 20:17 (CDT)
Re: Simple Question

Look on the disk image that you downloaded. There are folders "System Keyboards" and "Logitech Keyboard Layouts", and the included keyboard layouts are in these.

Reply
"Aziz Light", Mon, Sep 22, 2008 04:04 (CDT)
Can't activate my new layout

Hi everybody,

I just created a new layout based on the regular US Layout. When I created the layout, I opened the US Layout that was in the .dmg file that I downloaded from this site. What I did is just invert the shift key usage of the number keys. So for instance, if I press 1, ! will be typed and if I press Shift+1, 1 will be typed. I Selected Roman for the Key ID and the ID set itself automatically to 2356. I tried to change that value to other random numbers that I picked in the range of 2000-3000. I set the keyboard type to Aluminum Wireless/ISO; I have a 4th generation MacBook Pro, this keyboard type is the only one that matched my keyboard..

I saved the layout as PrQ.keylayout, and created a small 16x16 gif icon with the same name (and I changed the extension to .icns). I've put those two files in ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ and logged out, but the new layout did not appear in the Input Menu tab of the International System Preferences. I then put copied the two files in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ and restarded my mac but the new Layout did not appear in the Input Menu tab. I then deleted the two files from ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ and restarted, but it didn't work.

Can anyone tell me who to activate my new layout please?

Aziz Light

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Sep 28, 2008 16:57 (CDT)
Re: Can\'t activate my new layout

It sounds as though the keyboard layout may be generated with an error. Can you send me the keyboard layout, compressed with zip or StuffIt, to the email address in the Read Me file. I will be away from email contact from 1st October to 27th November, so can't promise to get it fixed soon, if there's a bug.

Reply
"Mehmet Tozlutepe", Mon, Sep 22, 2008 05:16 (CDT)
Not installing Turkish.keylayout to OSX 10.5

Hi,

OSX 10.5 including Turkish keyboard but not change. Because, I'm not find resources in system folder.

I want to change it. Because, It's inculuded (,) in numeric pad. I'm change it (,) to (.)

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Sep 28, 2008 17:01 (CDT)
Re: Not installing Turkish.keylayout to OSX 10.5

You can find the Turkish keyboard layout on the disk image on which Ukelele came. Look in the System Keyboards folder, and the Unicode folder inside that. You'll see three Turkish keyboard layouts, Turkish, Turkish-QWERTY, and Turkish-QWERTY-PC. You can create new keyboard layouts based on any of those with Ukelele.

Reply
"Mats Andersson", Wed, Oct 1, 2008 08:39 (CDT)
Generating the xml-files

Hi,

I'm interested to know how you generated the system xml-files in the first place. I've downloaded the font-toolkit with the kluchrtoxml/klkchrtoxml tools but where and in what format are the apple system provided keyboard-layouts? In System/Library/Keyboard\ Layouts/AppleKeyboardLayouts.bundle for example I don't find any maps per layout. What's the secret?

Thanks for a cool tool!

/Mats

Reply
"Mats Andersson", Wed, Oct 8, 2008 06:44 (CDT)
Swedish layout

In the swedish layout, the characters 'TM' (0x2122) and '@' seems to have switched places. E.g. <opt>+2 (code=19) should give a '@' and <opt>+' (code=42) should give 'TM'. Is this a bug in generation of the XML or where might this stem from? (I'm trying to use the XML-files to generate layouts to use in an app I write). I wrote the last comment with the question about how the XML is generated (still google'ing to understand how :-).

Cheers,

/Mats

Reply
"Mats Andersson", Mon, Nov 3, 2008 04:00 (CST)
Re: Swedish layout

Sorry for confusion here, the problem with the swedish keylayout was actually that I ignored the Swedish-Pro layout which has the keys correct (I wasn't aware, but I assume the Pro denotes some revision which Apple has made to the swedish keyboard in the past).

About the Hebrew I still find both the Hebrew and Hebrew-QWERTY to be faulty (having swapped keycodes 25 and 29 in keymap index 7).

Cheers,

/Mats

Reply
"Ah382", Fri, Oct 17, 2008 17:26 (CDT)
Remapping the backspace key

I'm trying to remap the backspace key to the tilda key, but it doesn't seem to be working. Does anyone know how to di this?

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 19:13 (CST)
Re: Remapping the backspace key

This is another case of some applications not behaving as you might hope they would. Many applications, including many from Apple, respond to the "control" keys such as backspace rather than checking the different output you might assign via a keyboard layout. So, there is no real solution to this one.

Reply
"Kári Emil", Fri, Oct 17, 2008 20:04 (CDT)
Making the files show up in the International Pane

What do I have to do to make it show up? I've moved the file to Keyboard Layouts in both the user Library folder and the main drive Library folder and then restarting and logging in and out but in never shows up. How do I fix this?

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 19:22 (CST)
Re: Making the files show up in the International Pane

This should "just work". If it doesn't, it usually means that there is something wrong with the keyboard layout. There would be a message in the console log if there was an error. If you are stuck, please send me the keyboard layout file, and I will have a look at it. My email address is in the Read Me file.

Reply
"Ahmed", Tue, Oct 28, 2008 14:22 (CDT)
Command Key and Arabic Keyboard

Hi there,

I've created new arabic keyboard layout, but not sure how to modify the Command+Key options.

In the default leopard arabic keyboard (i.e. Arabic - PC) when you click the Command button all the keys change to english so you can do things like Copy, Paste, Quit ..etc

with the new keyboard i have to switch back to english to use the command shortcuts.

Thanks

Ahmed

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 19:32 (CST)
Re: Command Key and Arabic Keyboard

The easiest way to do this is to start with an Arabic keyboard layout that already has the command keys working correctly.

If you already have a keyboard layout, and want to add the English keys with the command key, then you need to edit the keyboard layout and look at how it appears when the command key is down. You might need to change the modifier combinations to get a separate set of key outputs for the command key. Otherwise, you can hold down the command key, and either double-click and enter via a dialog, or drag output onto the keys. If you're doing the whole set of command key combinations, it might be easier to turn on "sticky modifiers", so that you don't have to keep holding the command key down - it will behave like the caps lock key, with one press to make it down, and another press to make it up.

Reply
"Gerd Knops", Thu, Nov 6, 2008 23:38 (CST)
New layouts only work in some apps

If I create or modify a layout (even if I just save a system layout using a different name, not making any changes), that new layout doesn't work in most apps.

It works in Safari and a few other places, but not for example in TextEdit (all input ignored). Console shows one of these messages for each keypress:

TextEdit[267] TSMProcessRawKeyCode failed (-192)

Any ideas? Tried on two different systems, both with relatively fresh and recent Leopards installed.

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 19:38 (CST)
Re: New layouts only work in some apps

There is definitely something wrong with your system if you are getting this sort of error. One thing to try is to create a new user account, and see if you still have the problem. If the problem persists, it is something in the system, and you may want to consider reinstalling the operating system and being careful about what you install.

If changing to a new user account makes the problem go away, then the problem is most likely linked to one of your login items, or possibly a corrupted preference file. Try logging in with the shift key held down, which disables the login items, and see if that fixes things. Otherwise, there are various programs available for checking preference files for being valid property lists.

Another way to check for a bad preference file is to move half the files out of the Preferences folder, and see if that fixes things. Keep halving the number of files included or excluded until you work out which file causes the problem.

Reply
"Dam", Tue, Nov 11, 2008 10:56 (CST)
Distribute .keylayout files

Hello,

Thank you for a great program! It works really well.

One question (I couldn't find the answer in the license or anywhere else, if there is one, I'm sorry):

Can I redistribute (e.g. publish on a blog) a .keylayout file modified in Ukelele? And if so, what would be the conditions of doing it?

The file was taken from Ukelele's .dmg (System Keyboards folder) and altered in Ukelele.

Thank you,

Dam

Reply
"John Brownie", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 19:44 (CST)
Re: Distribute .keylayout files

I don't think that Apple has copyrighted the keyboard layouts that are distributed with Ukelele, so they would be public domain. To be safe, though, I would acknowledge the source when distributing a modified version of a keyboard layout.

Reply
"Bacardi", Thu, Dec 4, 2008 11:48 (CST)
Word 2008, Open Office

Hi John!

Should Ukelele work with Word 2008 or OpenOffice.org! Word seems to recognize the given keyboard files, but as soon as I edit them, it won't work...

Bacardi

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Dec 9, 2008 18:02 (CST)
Re: Word 2008, Open Office

I think that custom keyboard layouts should work with Word 2008 and Open Office, but I don't have either to test. In what ways are they not working?

Ensure that you have the changed keyboard layout active. If you have a keyboard layout already in use, and edit it, then logging out and logging in doesn't necessarily pick up the change. If that is what you are doing, move the keyboard layout file out of the Keyboard Layouts folder (say, to the desktop), and move it back in before logging out. That will make the system read the changed keyboard layout file.

Reply
"Dallas", Sun, Dec 7, 2008 18:54 (CST)
Sticky Modifiers and quick-erase.

Is there any way to make Sticky Modifiers stay on after you've clicked a key?

The problem is that I want to start with a regular Windows-like US layout. I don't want all of those Option-key combinations. I thought there would be a quick and easy way to just delete all of the Option- states, but there's not.

This is also where MSKLC (Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator) wins in terms of convenience. With MSKLC you can double-tap a key to open its options pane and then you can see ALL modifier states for that key.

It just seems so tedious and time-consuming to make a custom layout. I keep thinking that I might be wrong and that there's a much more ergonomic way to design, but I can't seem to find any way to design that doesn't involve tons and tons of clicking.

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Dec 9, 2008 18:10 (CST)
Re: Sticky Modifiers and quick-erase.

I'm not sure what you're asking. Sticky modifiers does have a problem, now that I look at it, since it returns to no modifiers when the dialog gets dismissed. I'll look into changing that.

If you want to remove all the combinations with the option key, there may be an easier way to do it, which involves changing the modifier combinations for the keyboard layout. Choose "Show Modifiers" from the Keyboard menu, select the combination for option down, and then choose "Delete Modifier Combination" from the Keyboard menu. Ukelele will warn you that it will delete an entire KeyMapSelect element, which is what you want to do, so click "Delete".

If that's not what you're asking, can you try to explain what you want to do, and maybe I will be able to suggest a way to do it.

Reply
"Dallas", Wed, May 13, 2009 12:15 (CDT)
Re: Sticky Modifiers and quick-erase.

Took me months to get back to you... I moved to a new apartment and it's been crazy, but that's exactly what I wanted to do. Thanks for your help.

Reply
"MrGALL", Mon, Dec 15, 2008 13:12 (CST)
Hot keys don't working

I try to make Mac OS X version of Ukrainian Unicode keyboard layout (http://dict.linux.org.ua/other/ua_layout_uni.html) but when I try to use it hotkeys with â�� (like â��X, â��C, â��V) didn't work:

http://mrgall.com/dev/Ukrainian_Unicode.keylayout.zip

In standart Ukrainian keyboard layout it's works fine.

I did something wrong or it's limitations of Mac OS X?

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Dec 16, 2008 22:26 (CST)
Re: Hot keys don't working

I downloaded the keyboard layout and installed it, and I can use the command key combinations, so there must be something else going on with your system. Ensure that your keyboard layout is active when you try to use the command key combinations, as Mac OS X has a habit of changing the keyboard layout without your asking it to do so. Otherwise, look at other applications that you are running, whatever you have as login items, and so on.

Reply
"denisig", Sat, Dec 20, 2008 05:56 (CST)
Feature Request

I wish there were something like 'test drive' function. When it's enabled new window appears and you can test your new layout there without enabling it through International.

Reply
"john", Sun, Jan 18, 2009 19:12 (CST)
mapping modifier keys on character keys

is there ANY way of doing this, if not with that tool?

would like to know if i can give up my hope to map shift to tilde or at least toggle caps lock with shift.

cheers

Reply
"John Brownie", Tue, Jan 20, 2009 18:02 (CST)
Re: mapping modifier keys on character keys

There's no way to do it with Ukelele, that's for sure. What you want to do needs to be handled at a lower level than the keyboard layout mechanism. You might want to check out DoubleCommand, or similar programs. It may be possible, but I don't know for sure.

Reply
"larryy", Thu, Jan 29, 2009 22:57 (CST)
use right-option as fn key?

Experimenting with the program and looking through the previous posts, I begin to suspect that Ukelele and this kind of .keylayout file cannot accomplish what I want to do, but before giving up I thought I'd ask...

My unibody MacBook Pro has both a left and a right option key.  I would very much like to make the right option key behave as if it were an fn key.  (This is so I can do a one-hand page up, page down, home, and end, using the arrow keys and adjacent option/fn key.)  Is this possible?

If it is not possible, do you think a ~/Library/KeyBindings/DefaultKeyBinding.dict file that mapped right-option+left-arrow to home, right-option+up-arrow to page up, etc. would be possible and provide the desired functionality?

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Feb 6, 2009 21:49 (CST)
Re: use right-option as fn key?

You're right, Ukelele can't do this for you. You can look into DoubleCommand and see if that does what you want, though I suspect it doesn't. It's the sort of utility that does remapping of modifier keys.

Reply
"PiF", Sat, Jan 31, 2009 18:31 (CST)
Command key with Finder on Leopard

Hi!

Thanks, Ukulele is a great tool! However, I've noticed two things:

- command keys don't seem to work with the Finder (cmd+N doesn't open a new window, while cmd+W doesn't close it). Also copy/paste commands don't work.

- still with the Finder: navigating in the menu bar with the arrows doesn't work.

Did I miss something?

Thanks again for this tool.

Reply
"John Brownie", Fri, Feb 6, 2009 21:58 (CST)
Re: Command key with Finder on Leopard

Sorry, but I'm not sure what your problem is. Is it that you aren't getting the command key combinations working in Ukelele? Or is it that the Finder isn't honouring the key assignments in a keyboard layout?

If it's the latter, then make sure that your keyboard is active (the operating system occasionally changes the keyboard layout without warning), and that you have the right output for the command key combination.

With the arrow keys, you can't really change them to something else, or other keys to be arrow keys. Apple doesn't see this as a problem, so it's unlikely that this will be fixed. However, if you haven't remapped the arrow keys, and they aren't working properly in the Finder, that is a problem, and I'd like to see more details. You can contact me directly and I'll see what I can do.

Reply
"VincentCedric", Wed, Feb 11, 2009 10:20 (CST)
Invert option/control and command

Hi,

I would like to know what i must to change in keyboard.layout XML file to invert modifers key. I have an illuminated logitech keyboard, but the Windows Key is know as option, and option is know as command ;(((

i don't know what i need to change ?

Regards,

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Feb 11, 2009 16:11 (CST)
Re: Invert option/control and command

Although it's theoretically possible to do this with a keyboard layout file, what you want to do is better done with a different program, such as DoubleCommand, which allows you to change the meaning of the modifier keys.

Reply
"Eric", Wed, Feb 11, 2009 13:14 (CST)
Finder problem solved

Actually I had the same issue with Finder unable to response to Cmd+N or W.

You have to restart the computer when applying a new keyboard layout and everything is working perfectly afterwards.

(Using a Fr pc logitech layout with the Alu Macbook Us keyboard)

Thanks to the creator of the software (saved me a lot of tweaking) :-)

Reply
"عمر ملقب بالثانی, Fri, Feb 13, 2009 07:29 (CST)
ctrl-alt-key (or alt-cmd-key) doesn't output characters in »eopard

I am not sure whether this is a Ukelele or Leopard issue.

I have been using Ukelele since Panther times. Some of my layouts use ctrl-alt-e, for example, to output Ä� (e with dot above). Or I used alt-c to get Ä� but kept Ã§ with ctrl-alt-c and so on and so forth. This worked pretty good in Tiger for instance.

This doesn't work anymore in Leopard. I experimented with new keyboard layouts and I cannot get any combination of ctrl-alt- alt-cmd- ctrl-alt-cmd- + key to output anything (although Ukelele and Keyboard viewer shows the right character). Nothing is output.

I guess Leopard reserves the use of ctrl- and cmd- to system wide and application specific shortcuts.

Does any one has an idea how to solve this ?

Thanks.

Reply
"John E", Mon, Feb 16, 2009 14:07 (CST)
Swapping the right shift key and up arrow

I have a very odd keyboard that places the right shift key to the right of the arrow keys. It looks like this:

        Up       Shift

Left   Down   Right

In attempting to modify the keyboard, I have physically moved the key covers around, such that I get the following layout:

        Shift    Up

Left   Right   Down

Basically the middle column and the right column have been swapped. Is there any way to use Ukelele to swap the up arrow and shift functionality? I know that the keyboard is capable of identifying the right and left shift keys separately. However, I could not figure out how to use the modifier key settings to even recognize right vs left shift.

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer

Reply
"John Brownie", Wed, Feb 18, 2009 03:10 (CST)
Re: Swapping the right shift key and up arrow

Sorry, but this is not possible with Ukelele. Modifier keys and non-modifier keys cannot be interchanged by changing the keyboard layout that is in use, but it has to be done at a different level, such as the keyboard driver.

Reply
"Kyle Roll", Wed, Feb 18, 2009 14:00 (CST)
Swap Volume

How do you swap Function keys - I'd like to make F3 (volume mute) into F5 (volume up) and vise-versa. Is that possible?

Reply
"John Brownie", Thu, Feb 19, 2009 16:19 (CST)
Re: Swap Volume

No, that's not possible. You cannot change the hardware control keys by changing the keyboard layout. It happens at a lower level, down somewhere in the keyboard driver.

Reply
"bodzasfanta", Mon, Mar 9, 2009 17:08 (CDT)
changing keys doesn't work

Hi,

I use a normal PC keyboard with a Mac Mini.

There is a key which is only available if I choose the Extended ADB as the keyboard type. This key is next to y (if you use qwertz) on left. On my keybord this Ã (U+00CD and U+00ED). But the OS X 10.5 recognizes it as 0 (zero) and put Ã next to 1 on left.

I want to change these two keys. Its possible (if use the Extended ADB layout) but after I save and try to use it everything is the same. Nothing changes.

Do you have any solution for this?

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 16, 2009 16:55 (CDT)
Re: changing keys doesn\'t work

It sounds as though you either have an ISO keyboard (they have that extra key to the right of the left shift key), or a keyboard that puts an extra key there without being ISO. The difference between an ANSI and an ISO keyboard is that the extra key beside the shift key is actually the same as the key to the left of 1 on the ANSI keyboard, and the new key is put to the left of 1. Confusing, I know.

I'm not sure what you can do about it. Try checking the key code for this extra key and seeing what it generates. Also, experiment with some other keyboard types. These only affect display, not how the actual keyboard layout works.

If you are still stuck, you could contact me directly (my email address is in the Read Me file), and send me the keyboard layout file and some screen shots to explain the problem more, and I'll see if we can get an answer for you.

Reply
"Todd", Fri, Mar 13, 2009 19:11 (CDT)
donations?

Is there any way I can make a donation to the creator(s) of Ukelele, to help them continue developing it? Can I do it via PayPal, perhaps?

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 16, 2009 16:46 (CDT)
Re: donations?

If you'd like to, contact me directly. My email address is in the Read Me file on the installation disk image.

Reply
"Elizabeth", Wed, Mar 25, 2009 07:50 (CDT)
Changing a key on Swiss keyboard to Enter

Hello,

I just got a MacBook from Switzerland. I changed the keyboard to English, under International in Systems Preferences. But the 'enter' key is so far away for my little finger of right hand, because there is an extra key, compared to the America keyboard. I was wondering if I could change the (Â£/$) key into an 'enter' key. Would that be possible with this?

Many thanks.

Elizabeth

Reply
"Thibault ML", Thu, Mar 26, 2009 22:48 (CDT)
Writing direction?

Hi!

Thank you for this great app! However, I am still looking how to change the writing direction (like hebrew from right to left). Is this already possible?

Thanks a lot!

Reply
"jonathan", Fri, Mar 27, 2009 06:01 (CDT)
Re: Writing direction?

Writing direction has nothing to do with the keyboard layout as such. Directionality is a property of the Unicode characters (so Hebrew and Arabic letters, for example, have right-to-left direction, whereas Latin and Cyrillic have left-to-right). If your keyboard generates Unicode values that are right-to-left characters, they'll behave as such; and if it doesn't, they won't.

In addition, there's the issue of overall line/paragraph layout within applications; that's an aspect of application-specific text formatting, also independent of the keyboard layout. E.g., in TextEdit.app, you can use the Format / Text / Writing Direction submenu to set this.

Reply
"Carl", Fri, Mar 27, 2009 15:46 (CDT)
All I want is for F10 to be a 3rd CMD key

Seems simple enough.  F10 doesn't do anything on my Mac (I changed the defaults in Spaces & Expose), and if I can get it to do the same thing as Command, then I can plug in my favorite old keyboard which does not have a Windoze or Command key.

So I guess the answer is to assign Command's hex value to F10.  Anybody know what that is?

Reply
"John Brownie", Mon, Mar 30, 2009 19:59 (CDT)
Re: All I want is for F10 to be a 3rd CMD key

It can't be done with a keyboard layout. The F10 key is not a modifier key, and can't be made into a modifier key.

Reply
"Elizabeth", Wed, Apr 1, 2009 02:54 (CDT)
Changing a key on Swiss keyboard to Enter

Hi,

Would anyone know the answer to my question above?

Thanks for the help,

Elizabeth

Reply
"Rimas", Sun, May 31, 2009 09:39 (CDT)
Re: Changing a key on Swiss keyboard to Enter

Hi Elizabeth,

try to assign code "" to all layers of that key.

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Ukelele Mac OS X Keyboard Layout Editor

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