Introduction to the Roadmap

This blog post contains the March 2020 update to our roadmap for Keyman. This roadmap depends very much on the resources available to our team, and it will change over time. It is not a promise to deliver by a date, but rather our best estimate as to where we want to take the project.

Older versions of the roadmap:

We’ll aim to update this roadmap periodically – as we adapt to the ever changing software environment and priorities shift accordingly.

Get Involved

As Keyman is open source, we also encourage you to consider becoming involved. There are many ways you can be involved:

Looking Back

In version 13.0, we added three significant features that were not on the roadmap:

  • QR Codes for sharing keyboards
  • Redesigned Settings for Keyman for Android and Keyman for iPhone and iPad
  • Background keyboard updates and notifications for Keyman for Android

The Roadmap

14.0 – Feb 2020 – Nov 2020

  • A Better Keyboard Download Picker
    • Consistent experience across all platforms
    • Search across languages, keyboards, scripts, etc.
    • Remove deprecated keyboards from search
    • Sort results in more useful ways
  • Product Internationalization (i18n)
    • Existing products have mixed i18n. Consolidate using Crowdin.
    • Support i18n in keyboard documentation.
  • Error reporting
    • Single platform for error reporting using Sentry
  • KeymanWeb
    • Keyman Core for Web
    • Dropping support for IE, pre-Chromium Edge
  • Predictive Text
    • Improved corrections
    • Common optimisations (e.g. Capital first letter, etc)
  • Keyman for iOS and Android
    • Download .kmp from cloud rather than js (splits KeymanWeb and iOS/Android keyboard deployment)
    • Depends on: A Better Keyboard Download Picker
  • Keyman for Mac
    • Make it possible to select language for keyboard at install time
    • Keyman Core integration
  • Keyman Desktop
    • Use Chromium embedded web engine instead of IE
    • Improvements in Windows language integration
    • Make it possible to select language for keyboard at install time
    • Keyman Core integration
  • Keyman Developer
    • Use Keyman Core in Debugger / Command Line Tests
    • Online Stage 1 (GitHub integration and publish to keyboards repository)

15.0 – Dec 2020 – May 2021 

  • Keyman Engine: Web, Android, iOS, Windows, (mac?), (linux?)
    • Making Keyman Engine more accessible to developers
    • API stability
    • npm and other packaging formats for simplified distribution
    • cross-platform consistency
    • Integration
    • Documentation
  • KeymanWeb
    • Refresh keymanweb.com
    • Rework UI integrations – Toolbar, Floating, Button, Toggle
    • npm distribution
  • Keyman for Linux
    • Address serialised input limitation
    • Compatibility with Terminal
    • Fcitx support (alternative to ibus in CJK environments)
  • Keyman Desktop
    • Out-of-process Keyman Core
    • Accessibility API integration
  • Keyman for Mac
    • Address serialised input limitation
    • Per-language keyboard registration
  • Keyman Developer
    • Formally split Keyman Developer and Keyman Desktop
    • Online Stage 2 (keyboard development tools, kmcomp backend)
  • Keyman Core
    • LDML engine
  • Predictive Text
    • Morphological models
    • Learning models

16.0 – Jun 2021 – Jan 2022

  • KeymanWeb
    • Touch on desktop
    • Support for web intents – numpad mode, email mode (#1221)
    • Implement Keyman CoreJS API
  • Touch gestures and actions
    • Double-tap shift for Caps Lock (#246)
    • Slide down for Shift
      • Select popup key with gesture below the displayed key (#1025)
    • Longpress consistency or customisation (#1113)
      • Longpress display delay timer customization (#877)
  • Mobile apps
    • Async updates & downloads (#1316, #1317)
    • Implement Keyman Core for Web
  • Keyman Developer Online Stage 3
    • Interactive keyboard development tutorial
    • LDML editor
  • Keyman Desktop
    • Touch on Windows Desktop 
    • Longpress?
  • Keyman for Mac
    • Longpress?
  • Keyman for Chromebook
  • Keyman for Linux
    • Longpress support?
    • Alternative (custom) on-screen keyboard (using KeymanWeb?)
    • Finding other communities to pick up and package keyman (Fedora, Suse, …)

Discuss this roadmap

Join the discussion on the Keyman Community.


7 thoughts on “Keyman Roadmap – March 2020”

Ngaradoumbaye Clement · December 4, 2020 at 1:22 pm

Nous avons cherché à installer Keyman 13 sur mon ordinateur Windows 8. 1. Le Keyman s’installe bien mais une fois que nous voulons activer la police convenable Tchad Unicode me permettant la saisie des textes à caractères spéciaux ceci refuse. Quelle la meilleure alternative à entreprendre pour réussir l’installation. J’avais l’ancienne version du Keyman 8 mais par fausse manipulation ceci a été supprimé de ma machine. Nous sommes dans un pays francophone (Tchad), prière nous répondre en français pour une meilleure exploitation des réponses qui nous seront données.
Cordialement.
Clement de l’ATALTRAB.

Michael Baas · March 15, 2021 at 6:37 am

Do I understand correctly that a user who would want to use a keyboard that I have set up (not yet), would have to install Keyman Desktop? I can see how all the versatility require something more – but are there any thoughts about making native kbd-drivers (perhaps with restrictions) – or would these end up being too restricted?

    Marc Durdin · March 22, 2021 at 5:47 am

    Yes, you would need to install Keyman Desktop. The native keyboard drivers, especially on Windows, are very restricted in their functionality. On mobile platforms, you can’t even install native keyboard drivers.

    The beauty of the Keyman solution is you can create the keyboard layout once and use it on almost any device — Windows, mac, iPhone, Android phone and so on. We believe that installing a small app like Keyman to make use of the keyboard is a small price to pay, especially given Keyman is free and open source 🙂

Keyman Roadmap – February 2019 – Keyman Blog · March 8, 2020 at 9:19 pm

[…] Update: see the latest version of the roadmap […]

Keyman Roadmap – November 2019 – Keyman Blog · March 8, 2020 at 9:19 pm

[…] Update: see the latest version of the roadmap […]

Keyman Roadmap – March 2022 – Keyman Blog · March 2, 2022 at 9:15 am

[…] blog post has been a long time coming. The last time we updated our Roadmap was in March 2020. We haven’t been sitting still all that time, but we haven’t communicated our plans […]

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