Compiling the Keyboard

Before we can test the keyboard, we must compile it. Choose Keyboard, Compile Keyboard or press F7 to compile the keyboard. The Message window will display the results of the compilation; if you have no typing errors, the keyboard should compile successfully.

If there are any mistakes, an error message will be displayed in the Message window, which will tell you the line on which the error occurred.

Compiling the Keyboard

After compiling the keyboard successfully, we can start testing it. Choose Keyboard, Start Test or press F9 to begin testing. The Keyboard test window will appear.

Now we test that all the rules operate as expected. To test the rules, we type the keystrokes that will give us the output; for example, we can type a quote (') followed by one of A, E, I, O, U, or Y to test the uppercase acute-accented vowels. Similarly we can test the other accents, and C-cedilla (Ç) and the angled quotes. If the rules are correct, all this should work as we wanted.

Testing the rules in isolation like this will show if the rules are correct or not, but won't show other possible errors that might occur in everyday usage of the keyboard. For example, look at what happens if you type the following quote:

'Alors Alice demanda, "O est ma chatte?"'
    

As you can see, it comes out incorrectly as:

Álors Alice demanda, Ö est ma chatte?"'
    

The problem occurs when we have a word in quotes that begins with a vowel: the keyboard will convert it to an accented vowel. We will need to come up with a solution to this problem.

Step 8: Deadkeys