© 2025 Kari Eveli and Lexitec. All rights reserved.
USKBD.EU
Proudly made in EU
USKBD Background
My background
I, Kari Eveli, the author of this software, am a translator and a lexicographer. My main languages are Finnish, French and English. I studied linguistics at the university and am quite well versed with other languages as well (German, Spanish, Swedish, etc.). I started working with computers in the 1980's. The main purpose was to create a book publishing process for my dictionary work. I became familiar with text processing, encodings, conversion and keyboards. In the early 1990's, all this meant creating custom setups for getting text to print. I used a Finnish/Swedish keyboard but it was not optimal for my use. French accents were implemented as dead keys with unshift and shift positions on the same key. This was awkward and clumsy. As a QWERTY user, AZERTY was not really an option. I needed my umlauts for typing Finnish but I had to figure out something simpler for typing French. I started experimenting with a US keyboard and Jeroen Laarhoven's AllChars (a legacy Compose system for Windows). This system served me well for many years. The problem with AllChars was that there was no working Unicode version. It was limited to the legacy Windows code page 1252 (ANSI). In any case, this served as a prototype for the AccentCompose system.XyWrite 4 and code pages
In the DOS era, I used Nota Bene (a variant of XyWrite) for word processing and as an editor for desktop publishing applications. For several years, I have been involved in implementing a virtualised version of DOS XyWrite 4 that now supports most European languages and Cyrillic via code pages in the community-driven Service Pack version (originally there was only a Western European XyWrite version). This experience inspired me to try to widen AccentCompose to many languages. A unified basic system can support many languages, and in the case of AccentCompose, layout switching is possible. I also created a phonetic layout for the Cyrillic XyWrite (CP866X) which was carried over to the Pan-Cyrillic phonetic keyboard layout for Windows on GitHub (CyrillicPhonetic). The same basic layout is used in AccentCompose Cyrillic.
An Excerpt of Ode to Liberty by Pushkin
in XyWrite 4 CP866X
USKBD.EU
USKBD Background
My background
I, Kari Eveli, the author of this software, am a translator and a lexicographer. My main languages are Finnish, French and English. I studied linguistics at the university and am quite well versed with other languages as well (German, Spanish, Swedish, etc.). I started working with computers in the 1980's. The main purpose was to create a book publishing process for my dictionary work. I became familiar with text processing, encodings, conversion and keyboards. In the early 1990's, all this meant creating custom setups for getting text to print. I used a Finnish/Swedish keyboard but it was not optimal for my use. French accents were implemented as dead keys with unshift and shift positions on the same key. This was awkward and clumsy. As a QWERTY user, AZERTY was not really an option. I needed my umlauts for typing Finnish but I had to figure out something simpler for typing French. I started experimenting with a US keyboard and Jeroen Laarhoven's AllChars (a legacy Compose system for Windows). This system served me well for many years. The problem with AllChars was that there was no working Unicode version. It was limited to the legacy Windows code page 1252 (ANSI). In any case, this served as a prototype for the AccentCompose system.XyWrite 4 and code pages
In the DOS era, I used Nota Bene (a variant of XyWrite) for word processing and as an editor for desktop publishing applications. For several years, I have been involved in implementing a virtualised version of DOS XyWrite 4 that now supports most European languages and Cyrillic via code pages in the community- driven Service Pack version (originally there was only a Western European XyWrite version). This experience inspired me to try to widen AccentCompose to many languages. A unified basic system can support many languages, and in the case of AccentCompose, layout switching is possible. I also created a phonetic layout for the Cyrillic XyWrite (CP866X) which was carried over to the Pan-Cyrillic phonetic keyboard layout for Windows on GitHub (CyrillicPhonetic). The same basic layout is used in AccentCompose Cyrillic.
Proudly made in EU
