The Keyboard Wizard is the easiest way to create a simple keyboard. There are five steps to creating the keyboard: entering the keyboard details, configuring the layout, setting extra parameters, making a bitmap, and compiling and testing the keyboard.

1. Introduction

On this page, you should enter the name of your keyboard, and decide whether it will use Unicode or be code-page based (Unicode is recommended).

2. Design Layout

Each key can have zero or more characters assigned to it. Each key can be assigned a different set of characters for each shift state. You can change the shift state by clicking on the Shift, Ctrl, and Alt keys.

There are two ways to assign characters to the keys:

• Click on a key, and then type the character's code or the character in quotes into the box.
• Go to View, Character Map, select the character from the grid, and drag and drop it onto the
• appropriate key. This will set the key to output that character.
  
  
• To add the character to a key with existing characters, hold Ctrl while dropping it onto the key.

Note that any key that does not have a character assigned to it will work as usual.

3. Extra Details

Here you can enter copyright information and other messages for the users of your keyboard to see, as well as comments to go in the keyboard source.

4. Bitmap Image

Here you can create a bitmap for the keyboard, or load an existing bitmap to use. This bitmap will be displayed when the keyboard is active.

5. Compile

After you have finished the keyboard, press Ctrl+S (or choose File, Save) to save.

You can compile the keyboard for testing and installation by clicking the Compile button, or selecting Keyboard, Compile Keyboard.

To test your keyboard, press View Source, then press F5 to start the debugger (for Keyman Developer Pro) or just press F9 to open the test window (for Keyman Developer Standard).

The Keyboard Wizard generates a .kmn Keyman Source File. You can view the source for the keyboard by clicking the View Source button. When you edit the source directly, you can perform many more advanced functions. To learn how to create or edit keyboards using the source, read the tutorial.

If you want to create a visual keyboard to accompany your keyboard, click Create Visual Keyboard. For more information about visual keyboards, see Visual Keyboard Editor.