Keyboard layout editor UI concept

(click for bigger image)

At the top we select the keyboard layout file, the variant, and set the corresponding verbose name.

The keyboard layout editor shows a standard keyboard, where each keyboard key can show up to four levels. When you select a key, the bottor-left window shows the characters that have been set (here we use four levels). In this bottom-left window we can drag and drop characters (from Unicode blocks) and dead keys that are found from the right of the image. Dead keys are shown in red boxes.

The user is also able to include existing keyboard layout files in the current layout.

At this stage I am thinking how to easily draw the keyboard in a PyGTK application. It would be important not to draw it manually. It would be cool to have a GTK+ keyboard key widget, that you can specify the size, and the text that appears on it, then build a keyboard in Glade. Another option would be to have the basic keyboard as an SVG file (already exists), then draw over it with Cairo. I am inclined for the second option.

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

1 comment

  1. Cool. I’m really impressed with your work so far. I agree with option 2.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.