kennytm/custom_keylayout

Create Compose-Key-based Keyboard Layout for Mac OS X

Installation

1. Get Cargo, then build the executables

   $ cargo build --release

2. Generate the keylayout files

   $ ./target/release/custom_keylayout < sample.txt > sample.keylayout

3. Install the keylayout

   $ cp sample.keylayout "~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/"

4. Log out and log in again.

5. Enable the new keylayout from System Preferences → Keyboard → Input Sources.

Usage

The Compose key is mapped to "F13" key by default. On keyboards without F13, you may use Karabiner to remap it to e.g. right-alt.

Entries in *.txt determine the compose sequence of each special character. For instance sample.txt contains

æ   ae

Thus if you press F13ae, it should output “æ”.

Input format

Input must be in UTF-8. If the first non-space character of a line is #, that line is ignored.

Each line is separated by spaces into several fields, e.g.:

½       12
ಠ_ಠ     disa
じゃ    jJA -> j

The first field (½, ಠ_ಠ, じゃ) specify the output. The output can be any non-space character sequence. You could also use the escape sequence \x789ab to represent a Unicode code-point U+789AB. This is necessary if a space is part of the output.

The second field (12, disa, jJA) specify the input. This means e.g. pressing the sequence F13jJA will produce the string "じゃ".

Normally, after the input is finished we will return to the normal state. However, we could include an optional -> field to keep in the composed state. There must be a space before the ->. Here, the -> j means after typing jJA, the system will act as if you have pressed F13j again.