Typing around the world

I know I said I was going to write about the product management website - that will be coming soon.  While reviewing the current functionality of the product management website (and I was actually getting ready for the blog post) we discovered a couple of issues, which I need to correct before trying to take you through the process.

So ... instead I am writing about Keyman 7 Beta 1.1.  I don't want to call it Beta 2 - we haven't got all the major issues corrected yet - we haven't even started addressing most of the issues reported!  But there have been a lot of changes over the last 2 and a half weeks (is that all?!?) and we'd like to get them out for review and testing as soon as possible.

I am quite tempted to put out a weekly build - except that the process of:

1. the usual commit/build/test process (which we run multiple times a week),
2. uploading to the website, and
3. writing about the changes

just takes up too much brain space and probably pushes out the release date each time we do it.  So we'll release updates as frequently as seems necessary...  Which is pretty obvious, really.

In the Beta 1.1 build, we have corrected/completed approximately 150 issues/featurepoints (50 of which were listed on the online beta issues list).  Major work has mostly been done in Keyman Developer, and focused around the user experience in the keyboard editor, package editor, branding editor and distribution editor.  We are also about 75% through converting the Keyman Developer user interface to 100% Unicode (previous versions of Keyman Developer ran on Windows 9x and only had selected Unicode components).

We have a few more build/test cycles to go through before Beta 1.1 is ready, and then we'll upload it.  While you are waiting, here is a screenshot of the updated Keyboard Editor to whet your appetite (font smoothing/ClearType is unfortunately switched off in this screenshot as I am grabbing it over Remote Desktop tonight):

There are still some issues in this screenshot - the "Font is Code2000" text; the preview key display is messed up; the watermark is overwhelming... but you get the idea.  However, the most important feature is the inclusion of the Source tab - you can see all the changes you make to the keyboard in real time and switch back and forth between the source and gui editors instantly.

How to create a shareware product in Keyman Developer 7 Beta 1

I am going to take you through the steps to create a shareware product in Keyman Developer 7 Beta 1.  Much of the user interface will change with Beta 2 and no doubt some of the steps will be restructured somewhat, but the concepts should remain fairly similar.

Before you start, make sure you have a keyboard, and a package with documentation and fonts.  I won't cover any of that in this example.  I am assuming that you are familiar with Keyman Developer 6 and Keyman 6.

A few things have changed from Keyman 6 with how Keyman is distributed.  Keyman has been split into two components:

• Keyman Engine - installed in C:\Program Files\Common Files\Tavultesoft\Keyman Engine 7.0
• Keyman Desktop (formerly Keyman Standard Edition) - installed in C:\Program Files\Tavultesoft\Keyman 7.0

The Keyman Engine includes:

• keyman32.dll - The Keyman runtime keystroke processor
• kmcomapi.dll - Keyman's COM API interfaces
• keyman.exe - The tray icon application and background program.

Keyman Desktop includes:

• kmshell.exe - Keyman Configuration, Splash dialog and related
• keyman.pxx - Keyman product description file
• Help files and related files

The idea is that you can replace the files in Keyman Desktop with your own product files.  You can choose to keep the Keyman Configuration user interface, or you can replace it entirely with your own interface.  In this example we will replace the user interface entirely.

Step 1: start Keyman Developer 7 and create a new project.  Add your keyboards and packages to the project.

Don't forget to compile your keyboards and packages.  This will generate normal .kmx and .kmp files.

Step 2: Create a branding file

Step 2.1: Create your default task bar icon for the branding file.

Step 2.2: Setup the product options.  This is where you specify the distribution model for the product

• Shareware: You define the length of the evaluation - there is no up-front licensing cost for Keyman, and you can start selling the product immediately through the Tavultesoft online store.  The online store automatically manages the licensing for Keyman and product activation.
• Freeware: You purchase a license to distribute Keyman with your product as freeware to all users - at no cost to them.  You cannot sell your product with this model but must make it freely available to all users.  No product activation is included in a freeware product.
• Global: You purchase a license to distribute Keyman with your product and you have full control over how you manage the product.  Product activation is not included in this model.

In our example, we will go with a 30 day evaluation Shareware product:

There is no need to change the controller file name in this example - we will use keyman.exe which is included in the Keyman Engine.  Next, we setup the application command lines - Keyman's COM API uses this when another application needs to activate your keyboard:

If you were using the standard Keyman Configuration user interface, you would use the following options instead:

You do not need to update any of the messages from Keyman Configuration if you are using your own user interface for the product.

Step 2.3: Design the notification icon popup menu:

Step 3: Back in the Project, add a new distribution file, and edit it:

Step 3.1: Select your custom product in the distribution licensing options page:

Step 3.2: Then, add all the files for your product to the package.  In this example, I have created a laounicode.exe .NET application that has a basic configuration dialog and splash screen.  I will cover the making of that in another blog entry - for now, you can download it from the Beta downloads site:

I have unticked the "Include Standard Keyman Files" checkbox as we are not using the Keyman Configuration user interface.

Please note: a bug in beta 1 means that you need to add the redistributable file insthelp.exe into the installer if you do not include Standard Keyman files.  insthelp.exe is available in the C:\Program Files\Tavultesoft\Keyman Developer\Redist folder.

Step 3.3: Fill in the install path and setup the readme and End User Licence Agreement files:

I don't think the optional program command line works in Beta 1...

Step 3.4: Fill in all the details shown in the Info page:

Step 3.5: Create Start Menu entries, as shown below (if you were using the Keyman Configuration UI, you would use kmshell.exe):

Step 4: Finally, save your distribution file and click the Create Product button.  You will need to be online to create the product.  All going well, a .msi file will be generated in the same path as your .kpp file:

Candle and light are part of the WiX toolkit that we use for creating Windows Installer MSI files.

During this process, you will probably be asked for your tavultesoft.com login details.  Keyman Developer requires access to online services from tavultesoft.com to encrypt your keyboard and setup product activation.

I will write about some other parts of the product creation process soon:

• Walkthrough the Tavultesoft Online product management website - product management, purchasing licenses, activating end user licenses and more.
• Dissecting the LaoUnicode.exe .NET example

Don't forget - if you encounter any bugs when following through this, create an issue!

Character Map

I was editing a keyboard in Keyman Developer 6 today (European Latin) and after using the Character Map in version 6 for a few minutes started to hanker for the version 7 Character Map that I have been using for the last few weeks while preparing for Beta 1.   In the end I had to run over to the test desk and use the version 7 Character Map.  I wanted to use the filter feature - especially the ability to use the * wildcard - I searched for "latin*ligature" so I could find all the Latin ligatures.  No way to do that in version 6.

In the image above, you can see some of the characters are in grey rather than black.  This indicates characters missing from the selected font and instead of skipping them, uses a backup font, in this case Code2000.  The character map also uses font linking to try and get a fallback character where one is missing - unfortunately, font linking does not appear to work in the supplementary planes.  James Kass's Code200x fonts provide great fallback coverage for the Character Map, with only a few scripts (mostly newer ones for the Unicode standard) missing, so we will be including them with Keyman Developer.

Of course, we still need to support showing all the characters in a given font - which is currently broken in beta 1.

The filtering currently supports a single phrase, with * and ? (or % and _) wildcards.  Any SQL fans will recognise the LIKE wildcard terms there.  You can also use [ and ] but we haven't tested that yet!  I'm not sure how valuable more complex filtering support is.

The automatic 'follow' feature in Keyman Developer 6 (where the character map shows the character under the cursor) doesn't really work all that well.  I think that we will make it follow only when a hotkey is pressed in Keyman Developer 7.

One other Good Thing: the version 7 Character Map uses Unicode 5.0.

The Beta Process

We released the first beta of Keyman and Keyman Developer 7 on Friday and were very pleased by the number of people who asked to join the beta in the first day.  They have already created 15 issue reports of high quality which is very encouraging (Join the beta).

After publishing the beta first thing on Friday, we spent the rest of the morning tearing down the wall between our two new offices - found it quite a good way of bleeding off the stress of putting out the release!  We have no more walls we can take down so I am not quite sure what we will do after publishing beta 2.

 

Yes, this is my first blog entry.  I tend to find it hard to write down this kind of thing and I am hoping that an informal outlet will be a good place to do that.  I do have a lot of things I want to write about regarding Keyman, so that will hopefully keep me going for a while.