linux

Keyman for Linux

Projects

• keyman-config - km-config and some other tools to install, uninstall and view information about Keyman keyboard packages.
• ibus-keyman - IBUS integration to use .kmp Keyman keyboards
• core - common keyboardprocessor library
• kmflcomp - KMFL keyboard compiler
• libkmfl - older KMFL core library
• ibus-kmfl - IBUS integration to use KMFL

See license information about licensing.

Linux Requirements/Setup

• It is helpful to be using the packages.sil.org repo

• Install packages required for building and developing KMFL and Keyman for Linux

  sudo apt install cdbs debhelper libx11-dev autotools-dev build-essential \
    dh-autoreconf flex bison libibus-1.0-dev python3-setuptools meson \
    libjson-glib-dev libgtk-3-dev libxml2-utils help2man python3-lxml \
    python3-magic python3-numpy python3-pil python3-pip python3-qrcode \
    python3-requests python3-requests-cache python3 python3-gi dconf-cli \
    dconf-editor cargo python3-dbus

Compiling from Command Line

Build script

Installing for ibus to use ibus-kmfl or ibus-keyman

• The process to build and install everything is:

  • make reconf to create the build system and set the version
  • make fullbuild to configure and build
  • sudo make install to install to /usr/local

• Some of the files must be installed to /usr/share/ so make install must be run as sudo.

  To do this run sudo make install

  • This will install to /usr/local

    • and /usr/share/ibus/component/kmfl.xml and /usr/share/kmfl/icons
    • and /usr/share/ibus/component/keyman.xml and /usr/share/keyman/icons

  • If you already have the ibus-kmfl package installed then it will move the file /usr/share/ibus/component/kmfl.xml to /usr/share/doc/ibus-kmfl/

  • If you already have the ibus-keyman package installed then it will move the file /usr/share/ibus/component/keyman.xml to /usr/share/doc/ibus-keyman/

• run sudo make uninstall to uninstall everything and put it back again

Tmp install

Used by TC for validating PRs

Run make tmpinstall to build and install keyboardprocessor, kmflcomp, libkmfl, ibus-kmfl and ibus-keyman to /tmp/kmfl

This is only for testing the build, not for running ibus-kmfl or ibus-keyman in ibus

Manually

• libkmfl requires kmfl.h header from kmflcomp
• ibus-kfml requires kmfl.h and headers and lib from libkmfl
• ibus-keyman requires headers and lib from keyboardprocessor

So

• kmflcomp must be built and installed before libkmfl
• libkmfl must be built and installed before ibus-kmfl
• keyboardprocessor must be built before ibus-keyman

For each project run ./configure && make && make install.

You may prefer to create a different directory to build in and run configure from there e.g.

mkdir ../build-kmflcomp
cd ../build-kmflcomp
../kmflcomp/configure
make
make install

The install of ibus-kmfl doesn't install everything to the correct location for it to be used - to be fixed

Continuous integration

Teamcity PR builds will run make tmpinstall

Master builds run make tmpinstall and create source packages

Nightly and release builds upload the most recent new master build to https://downloads.keyman.com

Building packages

See Linux packaging doc for details on building Linux packages for Keyman.

Testing

The unit tests can be running with the following command:

cd linux/keyman-config
./run-tests.sh

Running Keyman for Linux

Setting up Ibus

Ibus should be running on a default install of Ubuntu

You may want to install extra packages to get other ibus input methods e.g ibus-unikey for VN

Run ibus restart after installing any of them

Getting a Keyman keyboard

• After installing a Keyman keyboard usually ibus will be restarted automatically so that ibus will look for the new keyboard. If for whatever reason the keyboard doesn't show up in the system keyboard list, you can manually run ibus restart.

Activating a Keyman keyboard

Keyman tries to activate the keyboard automatically. If you want to activate it for a different language, you can do so by following the steps below.

GNOME3 (focal and bionic default, also newer Ubuntu versions)

• Click the connection/sound/shutdown section in the top right. Then the tools icon for Settings.

• In Language and Region click + to add a keyboard.

• Click the 3 dots expander then search for "Other" and click it

• The Keyman keyboards should be listed here to choose

• Use Win-space to switch between keyboards.

Cinnamon (wasta default)

• Open Menu and find IBus Keyboards (IBus Preferences) and run it
• Make sure Show icon on system tray is checked
• Select the tab Input Method.
• Click Add to add a keyman keyboard.
• Click the 3 dots expander then search for "Other" and click it
• The Keyman keyboards should be listed here to choose

MATE (alternative)

• Open System-> Preferences -> Other -> IBus Preferences.
• Make sure Show icon on system tray is checked
• Select the tab Input Method.
• Click Add to add a keyman keyboard.
• Click the 3 dots expander then search for "Other" and click it
• The Keyman keyboards should be listed here to choose