Skip to content

change: add more content to explain LDML keyboards #630

New issue

Have a question about this project? Sign up for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

Sign up for GitHub

By clicking “Sign up for GitHub”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? Sign in to your account

Merged
mcdurdin merged 2 commits into from
Dec 13, 2025
Merged

change: add more content to explain LDML keyboards #630

Show file tree
Hide file tree
Changes from all commits
Commits
Show all changes
2 commits
Select commit Hold shift + click to select a range
8129e38
change: add more content to explain LDML keyboards
mcdurdin Dec 9, 2025
33fc877
chore: adjust blockquote style
mcdurdin Dec 12, 2025
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension
Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
6 changes: 6 additions & 0 deletions cdn/dev/css/template.css
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -133,6 +133,12 @@ q:after {
content: none;
}

.markdown blockquote {
margin: 12px 24px 24px;
padding: 18px 6px 6px 6px;
background: white;
}

table {
border-collapse: collapse;
border-spacing: 0;
Expand Down
52 changes: 51 additions & 1 deletion ldml/index.md
View file
Open in desktop
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -40,13 +40,63 @@ Keyman Developer. Version 17.0 of Keyman includes support for LDML keyboards on
desktop platforms - Windows, macOS, and Linux - and Keyman Developer 17.0
includes support for compiling and validation LDML keyboards.

As of February 2025:
Learn more about the LDML Keyboard initiative at the [CLDR Keyboard Working Group home page](https://cldr.unicode.org/index/keyboard-workgroup). An excerpt:

> ### The challenge and promise of Keyboards
> Text input is a core component of most computing experiences and is most
> commonly achieved using a keyboard, whether hardware or virtual (on-screen or
> touch). However, keyboard support for most of the world’s languages is either
> completely missing or often does not adequately support the input needs of
> language communities. Improving text input support for minority languages is
> an essential part of the Unicode mission.
>
> Keyboard data is currently completely platform-specific. Consequently, language
> communities and other keyboard authors must see their designs developed
> independently for every platform/operating system, resulting in unnecessary
> duplication of technical and organizational effort.
>
> There is no central repository or contact point for this data, meaning that such
> authors must separately and independently contact all platform/operating system
> developers.
>
> ### LDML: The universal interchange format for keyboards
>
> The CLDR Keyboard Working Group has written a definition for keyboards (UTS#35 part 7) in order to define core keyboard-based
> text input requirements for the world’s languages. This format allows the
> physical and virtual (on-screen or touch) keyboard layouts for a language to be
> defined in a single file. Input Method Editors (IME) or other input methods are
> not currently in scope for this format.
>
> ### CLDR: A home for the world’s newest keyboards
>
> Today, there are many existing
> platform-specific implementations and keyboard definitions. This project does
> not intend to remove or replace existing well-established support.
>
> The goal of this project is that, where otherwise unsupported languages are
> concerned, CLDR becomes the common source for keyboard data, for use by
> platform/operating system developers and vendors.
>
> As a result, CLDR will also become the point of contact for keyboard authors and
> language communities to submit new or updated keyboard layouts to serve those
> user communities. CLDR has already become the definitive and publicly available
> source for the world’s locale data.

---

### Keyman project progress

As of December 2025:

* Support for LDML keyboards on the web and iOS and Android platforms is in
development.

* A cross-platform visual design tool for LDML keyboards is in development.

* Tooling to convert Keyman keyboards to LDML keyboards is in development.

---

The LDML support is being developed in our cross-platform Keyman Core component,
which will enable a consistent feature set across all platforms including web by
version 19.0, with a common code base.
Expand Down