Combined Russian-Ukrainian typographic keyboard layout for Mac OS X 10.6

Hi, Habr.

For the second week now, my main operating system has been Mac OS X (10.6.7). Impressions ... ambiguous. I like a lot of things, I’m ready to put up with some (and I even admit that the time will come when I consider them convenient), but there is one that does not suit me categorically. Namely - keyboard layouts. The fact is that I have to work with typography (accordingly, I need a convenient typographic layout), plus to this - in addition to English and Russian, Ukrainian is often required. Well, I’ve tapped the PC keyboard for 15 years and continue to use it in my main job.

Having looked around in Mac OS X in its “out of the box” state, I was sad ... The situation, through the eyes of a nude swicher with increased requests, is approximately the following:

1. Switch layout on Command + Space. A pretty beautiful solution is to display a large translucent window with layouts, but I'm unusual.
2. The default layout is US. It does not turn off (in any case, the question in Q&A is still unanswered).
3. Typographic characters are present on the layouts, but the set does not correspond to what I usually use - there is a lot of superfluous (for me) and a lot of things.
4. The standard Russian layout differs from the PC-shnoy - a dot and a comma are available in Shift + 6, Shift + 7. There is a truth, and a PC-shny option. Everything is bad with Ukrainian - there is no PC option, plus the letters “I” / “I” are replaced by places.

What do geeks do when something does not suit them in the system? Right. :) They pick up a file.

First of all, I ported my typographic layout to poppy:




Since this question is asked quite often, I will preventively tell how it differs from Ilya Birman’s layout :

• First and foremost: it focuses not only on text designers, but also on programmers, layout designers, and Wikipedia editors. What does it mean? Almost any character that is in English is available on any layout - #, |, &, ^, <,> and others. Now you do not need to switch to enter a single character.
• Extended typographic character set. For example, it is not clear to me why Ilya has a multiplication sign (× or even ·), but there is no division sign (÷ and ⁄ ← should not be confused with a slash). I also considered it necessary to place a short space, the designation of the Japanese yen, the Ukrainian hryvnia, bullets, additional copyright symbols, and the heart. Mi-mi-mi.
• You can enter all the digits in the superscript (Alt + 1, + digit), and all fractions of the 1 / x type available in Unicode (Alt + Shift + 1, + digit).
• In the version for Mac there are symbols with pictograms of Mac keys.
• There are no diacritics (in my opinion, they still have a place on the keyboard layouts of the corresponding languages).

In draft form, layouts were created for three languages: English, Russian and Ukrainian. It became a little more comfortable, but, alas, is still far from ideal. The non-disconnected English layout with infernal typography did not allow us to consider the mission accomplished. In search of a way to solve this problem, Punto Switcher for Mac was considered - it allowed to select 2 arbitrary layouts, and switch between them by any key combination (including Ctrl / Alt + Shift, by the way). This option seemed convenient enough to me (after turning off the ruffles, such as auto-switching), but again the problem is only two layouts ...

This time the file creaked a little longer, but I got what I needed. Having refused the functionality of the Caps Lock key, I made 2 layouts - English, which does not respond to pressing Caps Lock, and combined Russian-Ukrainian, in which switching between Russian and Ukrainian is carried out, in fact, by Caps Lock. Cyrillic layouts are as follows:

Russian


Ukrainian


What did I get as a result?

1. Great (perfect for me) typographic layouts.
2. Switching between Latin and Cyrillic according to the native switcher heart Alt + Shift (optionally tuned to any other combination).
3. In Cyrillic, switch between Russian and Ukrainian by Caps Lock.

What have I lost?

1. Caps lock. Now, for LOUD statements, hold Shift. :) imho, not critical.
2. The setting “individual keyboard layout for each window” loses some sense, as in Cyrillic, everything will also rest on the state of Caps Lock.

In general, now I feel comfortable and happy. I would be glad if my solution is useful to anyone else.

Download links:
Layout package . For installation, just place the EnRuUaTypographic.bundle file in the ~ / Library / Keyboard Layouts directory . En-Us Typographic (English without Caps Lock reaction), Ru-Ua Typographic (Russian by default, Ukrainian by Caps Lock) and Ua-Ru Typographic (respectively, vice versa) will appear in the list of available layouts . After installation, I recommend that you reboot just in case.
Archive with large pictureswith a layout. You can print it on paper or stick it on top of your favorite desktop wallpaper using your favorite graphics editor. Images with alpha channel.
Punto Switcher for Mac , you already know why:


I bow to this. You can scold and express wishes.

Upd .: Moved to "Typography".