Topic Problems with Norwegian keyboard in Keyman 9

I have a Norwegian physical keyboard and have specified Norwegian as the Base Keyboard under Configuration > Options in Keyman 9.0. But when I use a Keyman keyboard designed for an English keyboard, some keystrokes will not produce the correct characters. These are character combinations with the ~ (tilde) character (a dead key on the Norwegian keyboard) and in many cases also character combinations with the dead keys ` (grave accent) and ^ (circumflex accent). Character combinations with the ~ (tilde) character will even make the keyboard freeze so that you have to log out from your Windows account and log in again to recover.

With an English physical keyboard the Keyman keyboard works just fine with all the characters.

Hi Stromme, thanks for the report. I have attempted to reproduce the issue you describe - in particular the keyboard freezing issue - but would like a little more detail.

Can you send me a diagnostic report following instructions at http://help.keyman.com/kb/40 so I can understand the keyboard layouts you are using and the operating system and Keyman configuration?

I think that there are two separate issues you are encountering.

1) Deadkeys not working. You may wish to try the following: type the dead key followed by space bar. On the Norwegian keyboard, this will produce the isolated character from the dead key, and some Keyman keyboards (specifically "mnemonic" layouts) require this character rather than the key in order to match their rules.

2) The tilde character is located under the AltGr (or Ctrl+Alt) modifer state on the Norwegian keyboard. I am wondering if one of the modifiers is remaining 'stuck' in Keyman's state. Could you try reproducing the issue, so the keyboard is frozen, and then press and release each of the Ctrl, Shift and Alt modifiers (both left and right may be necessary, and let me know if that resets the frozen state?

Stromme,

I've been doing some more research and development on this issue here and have found a resolution to the sticking dead key problem. I have some more tidy up work to do but will be publishing an update which includes a full fix. The issue relates to both a Keyman bug and a Windows bug -- the Keyman bug we fix, the Windows bug we work around!

In the meantime, press and release the Ctrl and Alt keys after typing AltGr+~ if the keyboard freezes.

With regard to the grave and circumflex accents not working, did pressing space after typing the accent make a difference?

Thank you so much for looking into this! In the years past I had just given up on using Keyman with a Norwegian keyboard layout. Now I eye a solution.

Pressing space after the grave and circumflex accents worked. Hopefully that will not be necessary after the bug is fixed.

Pressing Ctrl + Alt also worked to recover from a freezed screen after pressing AltGr + ~. Hopefully the key combinations with tilde will also work after the bug fix.

There is also one other key combination in my Keyman keyboard that does not work: &$. With a Norwegian keyboard layout, of course, $ is typed by pressing the number 4 while holding down the AltGr key.

I have just send a diagnostic report as requested.

I can report some progress:

• The sticking Ctrl/Alt bug is now addressed.
  
• The tilde deadkey on Norwegian physical keyboards had a second issue which meant it would not work in most cases. Fixed.
  
• AltGr keys on European keyboards were not processed with mnemonic layouts. Fixed.

The spacebar-after-deadkey issue is not so much a bug as a design limitation. I am investigating a feature update to work around that limitation, but am working on publishing a beta update for the above fixes before this.

Encouraging!

Please let me know when the update is ready and where it may be downloaded.

Thanks!

We've now completed testing and uploaded Keyman Desktop 9.0.476.0 to http://www.tavultesoft.com/keyman/download.php (standalone download only today).

I look forward to hearing your feedback; there are a number of issues corrected in this build (http://help.keyman.com/products/desktop/9.0/docs/about_history.php).

As I noted previously: the spacebar-after-deadkey issue is not so much a bug as a design limitation. We have designed a feature update to work around that limitation, but that feature is not included in this update. More on this soon.