Keyboard layout definition files

Question

For Various reasons i want to write my own onscreen keyboard for use in a tochscreen application.

I have to support around 25 different languages, including Russian, Gree, Japanese (Hiragana/Katakana) and most of the european countries.

The keyboard needs to support accent and diacritics, where you would hold and press the letter o, a list of "ø,ö,ó,ò,õ" etc. shows up.

I am looking for some files that defines what keys are included in the different countries keyboards, including the accents and diacritics.

I have tried to find them on Ubuntu and in the android source with no luck.

Answer 1

CLDR (Unicode Common Locale Data Repository) has compiled a set of descriptions of keyboard layouts in XML format. The data comes from various sources and is under public review, but it is neither exhaustive nor authoritative – though probably the best you can get at present.

You might wish to compare the information with data at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout which is more limited and not authoritative at all, but tends to focus on commonly used physical keyboard and their layouts (and standards for keyboards) rather than the variation across systems and devices.

Answer 2

On Ubuntu have a look at the files inside

/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols