Compile Targets

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Keyman supports a prefix at the start of the line to identify lines that should only be compiled for a specific target. If the prefix is omitted, then the line will be compiled for all targets.

Compile targets are deprecated in Keyman 17.0, and will be not be supported for keyboards that target Keyman 18.0 or later.

A more flexible mechanism is available with platform() statements. While platform() statements cannot provide alternate metadata for different platforms, they do support a much broader range of platforms, which is important for JavaScript (web) keyboards which are compiled once for many platforms.

The primary purpose of compile targets is to tell the compiler not to attempt to compile lines which utilises functionality that is not available for the given target.

Keyman directly supports the following compile targets. For legacy reasons, these names do not correspond as obviously to the compiler types as might be expected.

• $keyman: Compile this line into .kmx (desktop) or .js (web and mobile) targets
• $keymanonly: Compile for .kmx (desktop) targets only
• $keymanweb: Compile for .js (web and mobile) targets only

If any other compile targets are found, the line will be ignored. This allows for forward compatibility with future targets. Other known targets are:

• $weaver: SILKey (legacy Keyman clone for Mac OS 9 and earlier), replaced by Keyman for macOS
• $kmfl: KMFL - Keyman clone for Linux, replaced by Keyman for Linux

Compile targets function slightly differently to the platform() statements:

• Compile targets control what gets compiled into the keyboard, whereas the platform() statement result is determined at run time. This means you cannot use platform() statements to prevent a line from being compiled into a keyboard.
• Compile targets can also be applied to any line of code whereas platform() statements apply only to rules.

Example

c Note: return statement is only supported in .kmx in Keyman 13
$keymanonly: + 'a' > 'a' return

Version history

• Version 7.1. Add support for $keymanweb and $keymanonly targets
• Version 3.2. Add support for $keyman and $weaver (SILKey) targets