Can you create Mac keylayouts without a Mac?

[Magomed Vagabov]

Hi!
Sorry for being off the Ukelele topic but I’m a bit frustrated and this group looks like the only place with Mac layout experts.

I made a custom Windows layout that now is relatively known among Russian life scientists (pic related) and I’ve been asked to port it to Mac. Since I don’t have a Mac or anyone who can borrow theirs Mac to me for an unknown amount of time, I thought that it is a great idea to write the .keylayout file myself.

It is not. KLFC, .klc→.keylayout converter that I’ve found, made a layout with a broken Option+ state, and when I ditched it and tried to modify someone else’s Ukelele .keylayout content, I made a layout that was not showing in the list of all layouts. I changed keyboard id, checked if XML is valid, double checked that the line ending is LF, not CRLF — still not showing according to my friends with Macs.

Is there a crucial element that I don’t know about? If anyone could try and look at the attachment, I would be immensely grateful.

Magomed

[John Brownie]

When I run these through the keyboard layout compiler, I get this error message for the English one:

More than one key with keycode 48

And for the Russian one:

Reference to undefined action "dead:\u02c6”

For the English one, the keymap with index 6 has the two keycode 48 lines. For the Russian one, you will need to work out where you reference this one. \u02c6 is U+02C6, modifier letter circumflex accent. It’s at least in keymap index 4, key code 3, and keymap index 5, key code 3, plus in an action with id “ 3” and with id “5” and in the terminators.

Hope that helps.

John

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[Magomed Vagabov]

John, thank you so much! 

I understand where these types of errors came from and could hunt them down now. 

By the way, is keyboard compiler a part or Ukelele or something else? I want to tell my friends to use it, but google struggles to find “keyboard compiler”.

Magomed

[John Brownie]

It's part of Apple's Font Tools package, and is a command line utility. The actual command is klcompiler.

John

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[Magomed Vagabov]

Thanks again! I have one last question and I’ll stop bothering you :) Looking through the keylayout generated by Ukelele, I noticed that there is never a pair of action for uppercase and lowercase letters, e.g. if there is action="a" then there is no action="A", but some random number instead. Is it because the compiler is case-insensitive for action ids so Ukelele generates an action number or is it the negligence of the user from whom I borrowed a keylayout?

[John Brownie]

The XML format is case-sensitive, so it’s quite possible to have both “a” and “A”. When you turn a key into a dead key in Ukelele, the action name is taken from the old output plus a space and a number. Action names aren’t ever seen by a human unless they look at the XML, so it’s not much of an issue for most people. But if you’re hand-editing, then good names are more important!

John

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[Kamal Mansour]

Magomed,

May I ask how the following graphic was produced?

Thanks,

Kamal

[Magomed Vagabov]

Thank you once again, John, this is relieving to hear.

[Magomed Vagabov]

Kamal, I made in Figma with the use of EB Garamond Italic, PT Sans Caption and the font I designed specifically for this graphic.

[Kamal Mansour]

Very nicely done. 

On May 10, 2025, at 09:29, Magomed Vagabov <magva...@gmail.com> wrote:

Kamal, I made in Figma with the use of EB Garamond Italic, PT Sans Caption and the font I designed specifically for this graphic.

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[Magomed Vagabov]

Thanks! Feel free to reach for the source files in DM, as long as it’s for personal use.