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[George Fowler]

George

>Does anybody know of shareware programs for writing keyboard resources for
>the Mac?

Yes! It's called ResEdit!! Very simple to do. I sent a detailed message to
Paul Cubberly explaining how to do it; I'll enclose the same message below.
You can ignore anything extraneous directed at him! I've been out of the
US, and so this reply may be neaktualno already.
     George

Date: Thu, 1 Jun 1995 09:34:10 -0500
To: <paul_cubberley at muwayf.unimelb.edu.au>
Subject: Re: Keyboards

Paul,

>Greetings from down under.

Greetings right back at you.

>I'd be most interested to receive some of your keyboards for use with Times
>CE.

I'll send them right now in separate message. I'll also send the KMT
utility and the sample document that explains how to type with these
keyboards (pretty simple).

>Which application do you
>use for creating these resources?

You use ResEdit. It's pretty simple, really, but resource editing is a
nerve-wracking operation. Find some keyboard that you don't care about (in
System 7.1 and up you can just double click on the system to get a list of
all installed keyboards which are not "in service". Make a copy of one of
them by dragging it out with the Option key depressed. Then open ResEdit.
It will prompt you to open some document; locate and open the keyboard.
This produces a window with the keyboard's name, and a "KCHR" icon (labeled
that way). Highlight it, and under the Resource menu select KCHR Picker. (I
think double-clicking on the KCHR does the same thing.) This brings up a
list of KCHR's (there is likely only one listed). Open it using Resource
Editor (= double-click). This brings up a box showing all the characters in
the system font, plus a keyboard display at the bottom. Under the Font
menu, pick the font you want to use the keyboard with; it will then display
all the available characters from this font. Characters are displayed in
order of ascii number. Conceptually, all you do is drag the desired
character from the top, from the display of font characters, to the
keyboard. If you want c-hacek mapped to the c-key, drag it to the c key and
let go. It will stay down on the keyboard display, and the keyboard
document you are creating will map it there.

The only complication is that a keyboard involves a number of separate
Tables. There is a list of them to the right of the screen. I opened GF
Ceska in order to check the instructions I'm writing now, and there are 10
Tables listed. The default is Table 0, and this corresponds to the plain
keyboard (without shift, option, command, control, caps lock, anything). So
if you simply drag c-hacek down, it goes to the plain lower-case c letter.
If you hold down the Shift key, the table list switches to Table 1. So
dragging, say, upper-case C-hacek down to the keyboard while shift is
depressed (and thus Table 1 is active) maps it to Shift-C. Option is Table
3, Shift-Option is Table 4. Command (the Apple key) is Table 6. Caps Lock
is Table 2. Command-Option is Table 8. Control is Table 5.

Here's a list of the Tables:

Table 0     Plain keyboard
Table 1     Shift
Table 2     Caps Lock
Table 3     Option
Table 4     Shift-Option
Table 5     Control
Table 6     Command
Table 7     Caps Lock-Option
Table 8     Command-Option
Table 9     ?????

I can't figure out what Table 9 is! I really know very little about this;
I've just learned by trial and error, and with some highly pertinent
suggestions from Jake Jakobson, how to do just enough to create my own
keyboards. It could be that it does something in the original keyboard I
modified (I started with one of the Apple CE System keyboards, and
rearranged it to suit myself), or it could be that I inserted it by mistake
(there's a "New Table" command somewhere). In GF Ceska, I have assigned
most of the Option and Shift-Option tables, and have made sure that Caps
Lock and Command don't remap any unusual keys. If you decide to do this for
yourself, you should be prepared for lots of trial and error! And always
work on a COPY of your keyboard. When moving a keyboard into the System,
you just drag it into the closed System folder, and answer yes when it asks
if it should be put into the System. This is only possible when NO programs
are open; otherwise it won't let you do it. You can install a copy by
holding down Option as you drage the KCHR to the system folder. That's a
good practice, because then you keep out a copy you can edit. If you want
to remove a KCHR resource from the System, all you do is double-click on
the System to open it (you'll see a list of keyboards and system beeps,
generally). You cannot remove the currently selected keyboard (it won't
even appear when you open the System).

One last thing about editing KCHR resources. If you modify an existing
keyboard, you had better change the name and number before you save it. To
do this, while it is selected or open, choose Get Resource Info from under
Resource. In this box you can modify the ID number and the name. GF Ceska,
for example, is 15110, which is an ID number in the range used for
International System resources. (I can't tell you the naming/numbering
conventions, but I've learned this much; the US keyboard has a one-digit ID
number!) To avoid selecting an illegal number, I generally just modify one
of the last couple of digits. So this number is very close to the number
for Apple's Czech keyboard (which is terrible for an English speaker; I
guess it recapitulates the standard Czech typewriter/computer keyboard,
with lots of alphabetic characters crammed into the plain keyboard (and
most symbols missing).

>On the quality of the CE fonts, I have had the same problem as Jake Jakobson,
>as I produce our journal in 11-pt Times, and find that regular Times and
>Times CE don't match in height; and I can get a better form in Times than CE,
>which means I don't want to use CE alone. A real pill.

I use GF Ceska (ahem, my own naming convention!) when I use these fonts for
ordinary transliteration purposes, since the haceked consonants are on more
or less "natural" keys. I haven't had any printing problems, but I am
familiar with your problems from my own experiences with other fonts. I
produce JSL in Palatino, with a more or less matching symbol font called
PalPhon, and it is HELL to get them to match.

>So could you please send the keyboards for Czech and Polish.  I do have
>PopChar, but not KeyQuencer, which sounds useful, though the PD utility you
>offer may do just as well.

Actually, I use the commercial QuicKeys, which is very good for this
purpose (it can be bought for about $50 street price here, but I don't know
about Australia). KeyQuencer is supposed to be able to do all the same
stuff less elegantly. Basically, once the keyboard menu is activated, all
you need is to record a macro that selects GF Ceska (or whatever), and
assigns it to a convenient key combination. Then you need another macro to
change back to your standard keyboard (is there an "Australian" keyboard??
Do you switch y and z from our arrangement? If so, you may want to modify
GF Ceska; or ask me to do it, it's no big deal, takes two minutes. The US
keyboard has "z" in the lower left-hand corner of the keyboard.) Once this
works, you can produce slightly larger macros which switch keyboards, type
a given character (say, c-hacek), and then return to the standard
character. The sky's the limit here. I happen to have a copy of Keyquencer
1.2 on my computer, so I'll binhex it and mail it to you. It's dated Aug
1994, so it's not likely to be the latest version. But you can try it out
and see if you like it. I have the full installation, with some
documentation as well, so it should be okay. I forgot to mention that if
you want to get ResEdit, it is public domain stuff; they have it at
ftp.apple.com and elsewhere (there's a brand-new version out, however,
which is supposed to be necessary for System 7.5.1, which I am using). You
can find it easily.

Hope all this helps!

George

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George Fowler                       GFowler at Indiana.Edu [Email]
Dept. of Slavic Languages         **1-317-726-1482 [home] ** [Try here first!]
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