Keyman Developer Tutorial

Creating an Icon for the Keyboard

Session 4

 

This session we will create an icon for the desktop keyboard for the Dagbani language of Ghana.  This icon will be displayed when we activate the keyboard in the Language Bar.

1. Start Keyman Developer.
2. In the Project menu, point to Recent Projects, click DagbaniTutorial.kpj.
3. In the Project - Keyboard dialog box, click dagbanitutorial.kmn.   The Details pane appears. 
4. Click Icon. The Icon pane appears.
5. First, we want to clear the Icon palette.  Click on a color in the Color palette. We want to choose a light color like gray. The selected color will display in the bottom-left corner of the Color palette. Click on the square box in the left column of the Icon palette.  Then drag the mouse from the top-right corner to the bottom-left corner in the Icon palette.

6. Next, we want to add a character in the Icon palette to represent the keyboard. Click on the T box in left column of the Icon palette.  Then click on a lower left square in Icon palette.  In the Insert Text dialog box, enter D in the Text box.

Now we want to change the look and feel of our Icon. Click Change.  In the Font dialog box, set the Font to Arial, set the Font style to Italic and set Size to 14.  Then set Color to Green.  Normally we should set the font to the color and the size that is best for our keyboard. Then click OK.

 

To make the icon look good, set Quality to Cleartype.  Then click OK.  Use the arrow keys to center the icon.

 

Notice that the Preview box shows us what the icon will look like.

7. Now save our work by clicking the Save icon.