Apple's unicode keyboard layout versions location

Question

Based on the "ISO" standard, say you we're to buy a keyboard and then plug it in. Note, I have never attempted this, but am assured it will work after changing your keyboard's input source.

Is there a location on the Mac OSX Big Sur operating system where these different key mappings are stored? Where it would be easier to program based on these files? Where are these mapping located?

Keyboard Goal: (Input) American

Translated: (Other) Language

Working Example (Referenced From Comment):

I am trying to specifically translate code made in the USA in the standard format. Then run it through an AI translator which then reformats the file encoding and also the Unicode characters exactly as they were typed on a foreign computer. So the input file becomes a new file with a new file encoding standard relative to that specific country, then the characters are also changed to a specific desired Unicode standard

Or would it be best to programmatically change this?

Answer 1

Computers normally use a single encoding system, ISO 10646/Unicode, that covers all languages at once. It currently gives each of over 100,000 characters a unique idenfier. All hardware keyboards are essentially the same as regards the codes sent to the computer, only the printing on the keys differs. Software keyboard layouts and input methods in MacOS provide mappings of the standard hardware keyboard output codes to the Unicode codepoints that reflect the requirements of any particular language, while fonts translate those codepoints into glyphs on the screen.

This page provides graphics of some of the different language mappings which you can select in MacOS via system preferences/keyboard/input sources. These can be applied to any hardware keyboard and all use Unicode encoding.

These software mapping files are found in system/libary/keyboard layouts and system/library/input methods on a Mac. Users can also create custom mappings with apps like Ukelele and Karabiner and other methods.

But I don’t offhand think such mapping files would play any role in a translation system of the sort you are describing.