Installing the Mediekey layout
To use Mediekey, you need:
- Windows
- A physical Canadian French keyboard like the HP French-Canadian SK806a keyboard, Dell KB216T C36YV, or Canadian French version of the WASD V3 105-Key ISO Custom Mechanical Keyboard. (Sorry, the Windows touch screen keyboard doesn't have enough keys, has its own ideas about layout, and it's not fun to use it for complicated combinations anyway.)
- The Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MKLC), which itself requires the .NET runtime 2.09, and the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Service Pack 1.
- Text or document editors that support Unicode. (Most contemporary ones do.)
- Fonts that support these characters. (Many fonts that come with Windows do, as do many 'pro' fonts available for purchase.)
Remove it, using these directions. Otherwise you may end up with multiple versions with identical names.
Once you have MKLC installed, you can download the key file you need, HpSK806a.klc.
When you start up MKLC, you'll see something like Figure 1.
Figure 1 - MKLC displaying blank layout.
On the File menu, go to Load Source File... and something like Figure 2 will appear. You will probably need to navigate to the HPSK806a.klc file you downloaded.
Figure 2 - Open dialog in MKLC.
Once you've opened the HPSK806a.klc file, MKLC will show the keyboard layout. It's not using any modifier keys, so Figure 3 shows everything is in lower case.
Figure 3 - MKLC shows off the keyboard layout.
If MKLC shows you roughly that set of characters but a different keyboard organization, go to the View menu and select Options.... That will bring up the dialog box in Figure 4. You should choose the middle option and then click OK to continue.
Figure 4 - Setting MKLC to show the physical keyboard layout that matches these keyboards.
It's also a good (though optional) idea to look at the layout as it would be with the Shift and AltGr keys pressed. MKLC offers checkboxes along the left that tell it to do that. Figures 5 and 6 show MKLC's rendering of the layout with the Shift key and then the AltGr key.
Figure 5 - MKLC's interpretation of the Mediekey layout with the Shift key pressed.
Figure 6 - MKLC's interpretation of the Mediekey layout with the AltGr key pressed.
To compile the keyboard so you can install it in Windows, go to the Project > Build DLL and Setup Package menu item. MKLC will validate the layout, and show the dialog box in Figure 7.
Figure 7 - Warning dialog with option to visit log.
Mediekey very deliberately includes Unicode characters that go beyond the French(Canada) default system code page 1252, so there will always be warnings. As it notes, "This may cause compatibility problems in non-Unicode applications." However, if you're doing the kind of work Mediekey is built for, you likely are working in Unicode applications. (Most recent editors support Unicode, though many older ones still don't.)
If you're just installing Mediekey, you don't need to see the log. Click No, and and the next dialog box will tell you where MKLC put the installation files. Figure 8 shows that it offers to open the directory, which you should probably do.
Figure 8 - Do you want to open the directory? Probably yes.
If this is your first time installing Mediekey, you can go ahead and run the installer. If it isn't, please see the directions (TODO) for uninstalling the old version first.
If you look in the directory that MKLC created, shown in Figure 9, you'll see a collection of files. The important one is, of course, setup.exe.
Figure 9 - Files created by MKLC.
When you double-click or otherwise open the installer (setup.exe), at least if your system resembles my system, nothing will happen. Alt-Tab won't bring up the installer. It seems to have vanished. The key to this mystery is lurking in your Taskbar, where you should see a shield icon like that in Figure 10. (Sometimes it takes a while for the icon to appear as well.)
Figure 10 - Quietly throbbing shield in the taskbar.
If you click on the shield, Windows will ask your permission to run the installer as shown in Figure 11. Even though the installion package is created by Microsoft software, the installer isn't signed by Microsoft, so you need to manually approve it.
Figure 11 - Permission request for running the installer.
The actual installation is nearly instant, and you should see a success dialog like Figure 12.
Figure 12 - Installation complete (sort of).
The keyboard layout is now installed, and next you have to tell Windows to use it.
(Don't delete the installer. You may need it in the future to uninstall the current keyboard layout if you want to change or upgrade it.)
Installing a keyboard through Windows Settings is also a multi-step process. You need to get to the Language Settings, either by going to Windows Settings (Figure 13), clicking Time & Date, and then clicking on Language, or by typing "Language Settings" in the search bar in the taskbar. Either way should bring you to Figure 14, the Language Settings dialog.
Figure 13 - Windows Settings, Time & Language highlighted.
Figure 14 - Language Settings, inside Time & Language.
To use Mediekey in its default shipping approach, you need to have Français (Canada) installed as a preferred language. If you have not already done this, click on "Add a preferred language" and add it. Once you have done that, select it as shown in Figure 15.
Figure 15 - Français (Canada) installed. You don't need the other languages that I have installed here.
If you click on Français (Canada), an Options button like the one in Figure 16 will appear.
Figure 16 - Getting to Options.
Click on Options, and you'll get the French (Canada) - for some reason it is no longer Français (Canada) - dialog box. Scroll down to keyboards, as shown in Figure 17.
Figure 17 - Finally, keyboard options.
Click on "+Add a Keyboard", and you'll see a list of keyboards that should resemble Figure 18. You may need to scroll through the list to find it, and click on it.
Figure 18 - Keyboard options, including Mediekey._
You will probably also want to remove whatever keyboard Windows installed as a default for French (Canada). Figure 19 shows what happens if you click on a keyboard, in particular the Remove button you can click to take that keyboard out of your options. (It doesn't uninstall the layout, just gets it out of your way.)
Figure 19 - Removing an unwanted keyboard.
Finally, you have Mediekey installed and available, as shown in Figure 20. You can now close the language settings dialog.
Figure 20 - Mediekey installed.
(Usually Mediekey comes right up in the list. If it didn't, I've had to reboot and it came up. You can also have multiple Mediekey options there if you've installed multiple versions of the layout, which can get confusing. I always uninstall the old before installing a new one.)
Mediekey is now available, but Windows won't automatically use it unless you're already working in Français (Canada). I keep the language and keyboard selector in the bottom right of the taskbar, as shown in Figure 21, but you can also summon it by pressing the Windows key and the spacebar. You'll get the menu in Figure 22, where you should select French (Canada) Canadian Mediekey keyboard. Figure 23 shows the selected result
Figure 21 - Currently selected language.
Figure 22 - Picking French (Canada) and Mediekey.
Figure 23 - French (Canada) and Mediekey selected.
Now, with a physical keyboard connected, you can test out Mediekey in your favorite text editor or word processor. Figure 24 is a text fragment in Sublime Text, the result of typing AltGr-; followed by Shift-N, then AltGr-; followed by e. Next comes the cedilla character to the left of enter, followed by c. AltGr-6 creates the next character, and then AltGr-O produces the section mark. AltGr-, followed by a produces an a with a macron over it, and AltGr-« produces a with a circle over it.
Figure 24 - Testing out characters.
The fonts and general appearance may vary slightly, but you should now be set up to enter a lot more characters than you likely had before!