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Keyman 17.0 Release Notes

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Marc Durdin edited this page Feb 15, 2024 · 37 revisions

In version 17.0, the Keyman team has been working hard to improve Keyman and we are excited to introduce the following new features:

  • Support for the new LDML Keyboard Standard on desktop computers and laptops.
  • Improving gesture support on touch layouts. This includes introducing new gestures such as flicks, and multitap, and improving the usability of existing gestures, such as holding a modifier key while tapping on another key.
  • Enhancements to the predictive text suggestion banner, showing more suggestions and handling longer words better.
  • In Keyman Developer, an all new keyboard compiler that runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Alongside the new features, there have been many less visible improvements:

  • Keyboarding on macOS is now much more reliable with the introduction of Keyman Core into Keyman for macOS.
  • Diacritics and other marks can now be more consistently and clearly displayed on the On Screen Keyboard.
  • Keyman for Linux now works with Wayland.

Using Gestures on the Touch Layout Keys

There are now several gestures available to interact with some keys on the keyboard. Keys which have gestures available will normally show a hint in the top right of the key:

  • Long press: Press and hold a key, and after a moment a submenu will appear. Slide the finger to the submenu to select a key. Release the finger, and the highlighted key from the submenu will be output.

  • Flick: Press and hold a key, and then slide the finger in various directions on a key to reach alternate outputs. The key will animate to show the expected output when the finger is released. A common flick is to slide down to reach numerals on the top row of the keyboard.

    flick down on y to get 6

  • Multitap: Some keys can be pressed repeatedly and rapidly to reach alternate outputs. Tapping rapidly twice on Shift will activate Caps Lock on many keyboards.

Improved Suggestion Banner

  • Drag the banner horizontally to see more suggestions
  • Overly-long suggestions are partially hidden, but expand when a finger is held on them
  • Displays up to 8 suggestions

improved banner

Creating LDML Keyboards with Keyman Developer

  • New project wizard for creating LDML keyboards
  • Integrated LDML keyboard test window

New Keyman Developer compiler toolchain

  • The Windows-only kmcomp.exe command-line compiler has been replaced with a cross-platform kmc tool, with more consistent parameters. kmc is also up to 100x faster than kmcomp.exe when batch building keyboards.

The full change log is available here.

Keyman for Windows

  • Minimum supported version of Windows is 10.0

Keyman for macOS

  • Minimum supported version of macOS is 10.10 Yosemite.

  • Internals of Keyman Engine for macOS rewritten to use shared Keyman Core, improving reliability and consistency with other platforms #7857

Keyman for iPhone and iPad

  • Minimum supported version of iOS is 12.2.

  • Multitap and flick gestures are now supported for iOS. #7324

  • Predictive text suggestions are now handled more flexibly on the banner #7934

    • Can now display up to 8 suggestions on screen
    • Can drag the banner left and right to see more suggestions
    • Shortens long suggestions to avoid long words overwhelming the available space.

  • Improves scaling of key caps for some keyboards #10506

Keyman for Android

  • Minimum supported version of Android is 5.0 (Chrome 37.0)

  • Multitap and flick gestures are now supported for Android. #7324

  • When suggestions aren't enabled, displays a themed banner. This area is for displaying top row key gestures and is also reserved for future enhancements #9696

  • Removes in-app browser #8430

  • Predictive text suggestions are now handled more flexibly on the banner #7934

    • Can now display up to 8 suggestions on screen
    • Can drag the banner left and right to see more suggestions
    • Shortens long suggestions to avoid long words overwhelming the available space.

  • Improves scaling of key caps for some keyboards #10506

Keyman for Linux

  • Keyman for Linux now supports Ubuntu Noble and ends support for Lunar. #10561

  • Works now with Wayland #4273

  • It is now possible to specify an arbitrary language tag when installing a keyboard package from the command line. Previously this only worked for the language tags listed in the keyboard package. #8598

KeymanWeb

  • Minimum supported version of Chrome is 53.0

  • Now targets ES6 rather than ES5 #10257

Developer

  • Updated to Unicode 15.1 #9555

  • BREAKING kmcomp is replaced by kmc #9158

  • kmc is available as an NPM package with npm install @keymanapp/kmc@beta #8954

  • Extra fields are available in packages for license file, welcome file, typing examples, related packages (including deprecated packages), additional font files, replacing these metadata fields previously stored in .keyboard_info files. #9485

  • &displayMap allows keyboard developers to specify a font mapping for the On Screen Keyboard and Touch Layout to resolve diacritic rendering issues. #9032

  • Adds non-printing characters such as spacing, joiner, and marker characters for On Screen Keyboards and Touch Layouts. #9846

  • Keyman Developer now warns if attempting to use virtual keys in output of rules #10062

  • Keyman Developer now includes basic LDML keyboard editing and testing #10459

  • Keyman Developer now supports ngrok v3 #10359

Keyman Core

  • Keyman Core on Windows, Linux, and macOS now supports LDML Keyboards

  • Keyman Core on Windows, Linux, and macOS supports full normalization for LDML keyboard output #10390

  • BREAKING header file has been renamed from keyboardprocessor.h to keyman_core_api.h #9723

  • BREAKING API identifiers have been renamed from km_kbp_ to km_core_ #9724

  • BREAKING Context APIs have been dramatically simplified, with only 2 APIs to be used by most consumers #10401

  • BREAKING Introduced debug logging API for retrieving context #10644

  • BREAKING Action APIs have now been simplified #10644

Keyman Engine for Android

  • BREAKING Changes package name from com.tavultesoft.kmea to com.keyman.engine #7881

  • BREAKING Updates to Java 11 #8543

Keyman Engine for iOS

  • BREAKING Now uses the framework weichsel/ZIPFoundation in place of marmelroy/Zip for unzipping Keyman packages. #9958

Keyman Engine for Web

  • BREAKING Initialization option setActiveOnRegister is now a boolean and not a string #8458

  • BREAKING Reworks Keyman Engine for Web internally to use ES modules throughout; this has resulted in significant internal changes. The current API will continue to work without modification, but use of undocumented functionality may break #8560

  • The on-screen-keyboard for Keyman Engine for Web has been modularized in preparation for embedding in other Keyman platforms #8560

  • Multitap and flick gestures are now supported for Web. #7324

New Localizations

  • Mon (Burmese script) added for Windows, Android, Linux #9550
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