Frequently Asked Questions

The character palette contains only basic Latin letters. How do I enable other Unicode characters?

Can custom layouts be used on a computer with no KbdEdit installed?

Can 64-bit layout DLLs be generated from 32-bit KbdEdit?

Does KbdEdit work on Intel Mac under Parallels / Boot camp?

Some (or all) AltGr combinations don't work in Office 2007 or another application

Mozilla Thunderbird produces lower-case version of an upper-case letter mapped to AltGr

Can laptop Fn key be reprogrammed?

My keyboard has extra keys that don't appear in KbdEdit's GUI. Can they be remapped?

Does KbdEdit support non-BMP (>FFFF) characters?

The character palette contains only basic Latin letters. How do I enable other Unicode characters?

You have to use the Unicode Subrange Editor to activate desired Unicode subset(s).

Can custom layouts be used on a computer with no KbdEdit installed?

Custom layouts exported as Standalone Layout Installer packages can be deployed without any restrictions, i.e. they don't require a version of KbdEdit to be installed on the target computer. Note however that only Premium edition can generate these packages.

On the other hand, KBE files generated by the Personal or Lite edition require a version of KbdEdit to be installed on the target computer. KbdEdit Player provides a cost-effective solution for "create once, deploy many times" scenarios.

Can 64-bit layout DLLs be generated from 32-bit KbdEdit?

No. 32-bit version of KbdEdit is capable of generating only 32-bit keyboard DLLs. Conversely, 64-bit version generates only 64-bit DLLs. The recommended method for 32/64 bit interoperability is to use KBE files, which are platform-independent.

Does KbdEdit work on Intel Mac under Parallels / Boot camp?

Yes, KbdEdit and its custom layouts work without problems on Intel Macs running Windows under either Parallels or Boot Camp.

KbdEdit also supports Windows as a guest OS under all major virtualization products (VMWare, VirtualPC etc).

Some (or all) AltGr combinations don't work in Office 2007 or another application

This is usually caused by a conflict between Ctrl+Alt keyboard shortcuts and AltGr mappings, AltGr being simply a shorthand for Ctrl+Alt.

The solution is to replace AltGr with another modifier key which is not so overused, like Kana. See this example for a detailed step-by-step guide.

Mozilla Thunderbird produces lower-case version of an upper-case letter mapped to AltGr

The popular Mozilla Thunderbird email client has a weird quirk that, even though probably created with the best intentions, ends up being quite annoying:

If an upper-case letter (e.g. Ç) is mapped to an AltGr combination, Thunderbird's editor will produce its lower-case version (ç in this case). All other Windows applications produce the correct letter (i.e. Ç). Thunderbird's "logic" seems to be that since the modifier combination doesn't include Shift, the user probably doesn't want it to produce upper-case letters.

The workaround is to move all upper-case letters from AltGr to AltGr+Shift . You might first have to enable this combination if it is not available in the High-level editor: switch to the Low-level, and move SHIFT + ALTGR from the "Unused modifier combinations" list to "Active modifier combinations".

Thanks to Peter Fairchild for pointing this problem out.

Can laptop Fn key be reprogrammed?

Unfortunately, no. The Fn key is hard-wired on the hardware level to change the function of other keys it impacts. The behavior of this key is not standardized - each laptop model handles it differently. Unlike other "normal" keys, it doesn't produce a scan code visible to Windows, and hence cannot be given a virtual key code (see Low-level editor for an explanation of scan and virtual key codes).

My keyboard has extra keys that don't appear in KbdEdit's GUI. Can they be remapped?

Certain keyboard models have less common or non-standard keys that don't appear in KbdEdit's GUI. These keys cannot be made "current" by clicking on their visual GUI representation, but it still might be possible to remap them.

First, switch to the Low-level editor. Then press the non-standard key on your physical keyboard. If this causes the "Scan code" field to change - congratulations, the key can be remapped, and you have just discovered its scan code.

The key might already have a virtual code assigned, in which case it will be displayed in the "Assigned virtual code" combo; otherwise, the combo will show "VK__none_".

If you want the key to behave as a non-mappable key (see List of Virtual Key Codes), simply choose the desired non-mappable VK code from the "Assigned virtual code" combo (e.g. you can make the key behave as Caps Lock by assigning it VK_CAPITAL).

If you want the key to produce characters, you should first give it an unused mappable virtual key code (VK), again by choosing it from "Assigned virtual code". Choosing the right VK might involve certain amount of hit-and-miss - unlike the standard keys, you cannot use the right-click popup which neatly classifies VKs into mappable / nonmappable, used / free.

After you have assigned an unused mappable VK (e.g. VK_ATTN), switch to the High-level editor. To make the key current, and thus editable, use the "Current key" combo to activate the VK you have just assigned to your non-standard key. It might also be possible to activate it by pressing it on the physical keyboard.

Once the key is made current, you can modify its mappings through the Mappings for the current key zone. E.g. you can edit the mappings using drag-drop, or through the Key mapping editor popup dialog.

Does KbdEdit support non-BMP (>FFFF) characters?

The range of 16-bit characters 0000-FFFF is known as the "Basic Multilingual Plane" or BMP. These characters can be directly represented by the UTF-16 encoding KbdEdit uses. Unicode standard also defines 16 other planes with numerical character values ranging from 10000 to 10FFFF. Characters from this range are known as "non-BMP" code points.

Starting with version 1.2.2, non-BMP characters are fully supported by KbdEdit. More precisely, they are supported to the extent the Windows keyboard model supports them - in practice there are some limitations with Caps-Lock mappings and dead characters.

These limitations are caused by the way non-BMP characters are represented internally: since their numeric value is higher than FFFF, they must be stored as two-character ligatures of surrogate pairs. This renders them unusable in the few places where ligatures are not allowed.

For example, non-BMP codepoint 𠀀 20000 ("CJK Unified Ideograph Extension") is internally represented as a ligature of surrogate characters D840 and DC00. For an exact algorithm for calculating surrogate pairs, refer to the UTF-16 Wikipedia page. You can also try this very handy Surrogate Pair Online Calculator.

To properly render non-BMP characters, you will also need a font with good coverage of non-BMP Unicode ranges. We recommend Everson Mono.