Create keyboard for iPhone

Do you want to create keyboard layout in iPhone ? It’s easy and don’t need SDK, don’t need programming logic, don’t need to write program for keyboard. However, your iPhone should be jailbreak. Add http://cydia.macforus.com source in Cydia.

How to add source in Cydia

Go to Cydia > Manage > Sources > Edit > Add and then enter http://cydia.macforus.com.

Install iKeyExx

Search iKeyEx in cydia and install it.

How to create keyboard

First, download some keyboard from cydia and you can try to edit it. You can download zawgyi keyboard in there. After download, you will see Zawgyi.keyboard Folder and you will see 3 files.

• Info.plist
• layout.plist
• variants.plist

You can change keyboard name in Info.plist. layout.plist is the key of the keyboard. It’s using 5 rows structure and you can see following

rows=5;
arrangement=(11,11,11,10,3);

rows is the number of rows and arrangement is the number of key in keyboards. First row is total 11 buttons and second also. Ok, you may understand it.

Alphabet = {

is the first layout of the keyboard. Alphabet have two layout. Normal and Shit. Normal is a,b,c and Shift is A,B,C. So, we can add some key in there.

texts = (
(“က”,”ခ”,”ဂ”,”ဃ”,”င”,”စ”,”ဆ”,”ဇ”,”ဈ”,”ည”,”ဌ”),
(“ဏ”,”တ”,”ထ”,”ဒ”,”ဓ”,”န”,”ပ”,”ဖ”,”ဗ”,”ဘ”,”မ”),
(“ေ”,”ယ”,”ရ”,”လ”,”ဝ”,”သ”,”ဟ”,”အ”,”၏”,”၍”,”႑”),
(“ွ”,”ု”,”ူ”,”ဳ”,”ဴ”,”့”,”႕”,”း”,”ြ”,”ႊ”),
()
);
//
shiftedTexts = (
(“ၠ”,”ၡ”,”ၢ”,”ၣ”,”ဦ”,”ၥ”,”ၦ”,”ၨ”,”ၩ”,”ဉ”,”ၪ”),
(“ၰ”,”ၲ”,”ၳ”,”ၵ”,”ၶ”,”ၷ”,”ၸ”,”ၹ”,”ၺ”,”ၻ”,”ၼ”),
(“ႋ”,”႐”,”ႅ”,”႔”,”ႆ”,”ၲ”,”ၧ”,”႖”,”ႎ”,”ႌ”,”ႍ”),
(“ၿ”,”ႁ”,”ႂ”,”ႄ”,”ႇ”,”(“,”)”,”[","]“,”.”),
()
);

You must add key with arrangement structure. It’s mean, first rows have 11 key and second have 11 and third have 11 and fourth have 10. The last , you don’t add in there because it’s space and international key. You can also do like that in Numbers = {. After changes you should change your folder name with your keyboard name. Example, you give MyKeyboard in info.plist , following like that

CFBundleDisplayName = “MyKeyboard”;

Folder name should be MyKeyboard.keyboard. Ok, done all. Now, upload your keyboard folder to /Library/iKeyEx/Keyboards.

How to add keyboard in iPhone

Go t o Settings > iKeyEx > Mix and match > Make.

Layout > Your Keyboard Name and give name it. After that go to iKeyEx  > Keyboards and then add your keyboard with (+) sign. You can change your keyboard with world icon.

You should read http://code.google.com/p/networkpx/wiki/Creating_layout_plist for create layout detail.