Keyman Update for 10 November 2023

This blog reports on significant Keyman product and keyboard development updates over the two weeks from 28 October – 10 November 2023.

As always, you can follow all of our development online at github.com/keymanapp/keyman, and you may find the Keyman Development Status Site at status.keyman.com both interesting and slightly overwhelming!

Keyman minor releases

Keyman 17.0.201-alpha through 17.0.208-alpha were released in this cycle.

Two significant updates to the 17.0-alpha release that have landed in the last two weeks are:

• Keyman for macOS has had an extensive rewrite of its internal keyboard processing code, fixing numerous compatibility issues and reducing the cost of future development on Keyman (#7857)
• Keyman Developer now supports a number of additional non-printing characters in the On Screen Keyboard templates (#9846)

Keyboard updates

• A new keyboard, Burushaski(بروشسکی) Perso/Arabic is now available. Burushaski Girminas (بروشسکی) Perso/Arabic is the keyboard to write in the Perso Arabic Script (عربی فارسی رسم الخط) of Burushaski. This particular orthography was developed and approved by Burusho Maʰraka, a representative body of the three varieties of Burushaski (Hunza, Nagir and Yasin). بروشسکی میں لکھنے کے لیے یہ کلیدی تختہ استعمال کریں۔. With thanks to @quwatsunny (#2441, #2452, #2454)
• The Newa Traditional Extended keyboard was updated to version 1.0.1 to show clearer key caps for specific control character keys and deadkeys, thank you to @SvarnimN (#2440)
• The Deseret keyboard was updated to version 1.2 to support mobile touch devices and added longpress keys (#2438, #2447)
• The Gondi (Gunjala) and Gondi INSCRIPT (Gunjala) keyboards were updated to include additional fonts (#2436)
• Runeboard was updated to version 2.2, swapping ᛝ and ᛥ on the main/unshifted layer, and swapping ᛜ and ᚶ on the shift layer, many thanks @Runeboard. (#2450)
• First Peoples’ Cultural council updated the FirstVoices Dane-Z̲aa Z̲áágéʔ keyboard to version 9.3, improving the mobile layout, adding automatic shifting, changing combining keys to deadkeys, and more. Thanks to @HopsAndHops (#2459)
• Several Cree keyboards — BJCreeUNI (east), Naskapi (Classic), Naskapi (Common), and BJ-OjiCree (Kingfisher) — have been updated with a fixed font which works more reliably in MS Word and other programs on Windows (#2455)