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Keyman language history

Keyman 3

The structure of rules is not backwardly compatible with earlier versions of Keyman. The left hand side of the rule changed from being a sequence of keystrokes to being a context + single keystroke.
Stores were introduced.
Long line support

Keyman 4

The + character became required, and usage became stricter to follow the standard now: the plus character must separate context from keystroke in a rule.
Keyboards are now compiled by the developer into .kmx files, rather than being distributed as .kmn files.

Keyman 5

Added Unicode support
Added Input Method eXtension support
Deprecated bitmaps statement
Deprecated language statement. Note that the language statement was reintroduced in Keyman 6 with a new meaning
Keyman 5.0 added system stores
Deprecated layout statement

Keyman 6

Added named character constant support
Added Ethnologue (ISO 639-3) code support
Added Mnemonic layouts (reworked in Keyman 8 and 9)
Added Virtual character keys to support mnemonic layouts
Keyman 6.0 added support for deadkeys and virtual keys in stores
Enhanced context() statement to work on left hand side of rule

Keyman 7

Added &visualkeyboard store
Enhanced &language store to support combined codes
Added notany() statement
Added web keyboard support
Enhanced &bitmap store to support .ico format files
Added &windowslanguages store
Keyman 7.0 extended maximum store length to 4095 characters

Keyman 8

Keyman 9

Added touch device support
Added &keyboardversion store
Added &kmw_embedcss store
Added platform statement
Added layer statement
Added &targets store
Enforced requirement that use() is last statement in a rule

Keyman 10

Changed language tags from ISO 639-3 to BCP 47
Deprecated &ethnologuecode store
Deprecated &language store
Deprecated &windowslanguages store
Left and right modifiers and Caps Lock modifier are supported for Virtual Keys in KeymanWeb 10.0 and later
Deadkeys now work 100% identically in KeymanWeb 10.0 and Keyman Desktop 10.0, in particular using multiple deadkeys in a row.

Keyman 11

&targets store now supports linux
.kmn files without BOM are now treated as UTF-8 unless they contain invalid UTF-8 sequences

Keyman 12

No language changes.

Keyman 13

Virtual keys no longer need to be in quotes for the &hotkey store

Keyman 14

Added range expansions
Added &CasedKeys store
Virtual keys may now be identified by ISO9995 key ids (e.g. + [SHIFT E01])
The compiler now enforces order of certain statements in the context part of the rule
notany() and context() are now supported together for KeymanWeb, iOS, Android (#3816)
Hangul named constants were corrected

Keyman 15

Unicode key identifiers in touch layouts can now have multiple characters, e.g. U_1000_1001
Casing support is now available for touch layouts, including Caps Lock layer, start of sentence support, and double-tap Shift for Caps.
Added support for begin NewContext and begin PostKeystroke entrypoints
Added support for readonly groups
Added support for &newLayer system store and &oldLayer system store

Keyman 16

Initial support for LDML keyboard format in compiled files. Note that this is not a change to the Keyman keyboard language.

Keyman 17

Support for flick and multi-tap gestures in touch layouts
Support for additional special key caps in touch layouts: *Sp*, *NBSp*, *NarNBSp*, *EnQ*, *EmQ*, *EnSp*, *EmSp*, *PunctSp*, *ThSp*, *HSp*, *ZWSp*, *ZWJ*, *WJ*, *CGJ*, *LTRM*, *RTLM*, *SH*, *HTab*

Keyman 19

Validity of store, group, and deadkey names has been tightened (disallowing space, comma, non-characters, parentheses, square brackets)

Keyman 20 (tentative)

Support for legacy header statements (such as VERSION) has been removed. Use system stores instead.
Support for decimal, hexadecimal, and octal character code formats has been removed.
Support for compile targets has been removed.
Support for &ethnologuecode, &language, &windowslanguages system stores has been removed.