Svorak on windows xp
January 9, 2008
Getting the svorak layout to work smoothly on windows wasn't as simple as I first (naively) thought... My setup is somewhat unusual too: windows xp, typematrix 2030 keyboard and x-win32 as local X server. I am using the svorak layout known as Likets version (Svorak A1).
The first step was to configure windows to use the svorak layout.
A portable way to do that is to run this AutoHotkey binary, but this won't cooperate well with x-win32.
A better but more violent solution is to copy this keyboard dll into C:\WINDOWS\system32\, then edit an existing keybord in the registry to use this dll instead of the original one. You could for example replace the american dvorak layout with our svorak variant. To do just that, start regedit, open the path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\00010409\" and edit the key "Layout File" to contain "SVORAKA1.DLL". Then reconfigure windows to use the 'American (dvorak)' layout as default for your keyboard and restart windows. Next time you logon you will be typing in svorak :) Of course, you won't be able to use the real dvorak layout anymore after this change...
Now remains to configure x-win32: copy this file into x-win32's lib directory, normally under "C:\Program\StarNet\X-Win32\Lib". Then find the 'input/keyboard' configuration menu and set the default keyboard to 'Svorak (svorak-XWin32.kbd)'.
Voila!
The first step was to configure windows to use the svorak layout.
A portable way to do that is to run this AutoHotkey binary, but this won't cooperate well with x-win32.
A better but more violent solution is to copy this keyboard dll into C:\WINDOWS\system32\, then edit an existing keybord in the registry to use this dll instead of the original one. You could for example replace the american dvorak layout with our svorak variant. To do just that, start regedit, open the path "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts\00010409\" and edit the key "Layout File" to contain "SVORAKA1.DLL". Then reconfigure windows to use the 'American (dvorak)' layout as default for your keyboard and restart windows. Next time you logon you will be typing in svorak :) Of course, you won't be able to use the real dvorak layout anymore after this change...
Now remains to configure x-win32: copy this file into x-win32's lib directory, normally under "C:\Program\StarNet\X-Win32\Lib". Then find the 'input/keyboard' configuration menu and set the default keyboard to 'Svorak (svorak-XWin32.kbd)'.
Voila!
