Customized Keyboards

You can customize your keyboard to suit your special needs. Any character can be assigned to any key in regular or shifted position, or in Ctrl+Alt or Ctrl+Alt+Shift position.

1	Click Tools, Keyboards, Customize.

You will be prompted to make a copy of the default keyboard and the Select Keyboard Layout dialog will appear on your screen. Make sure that the keyboard that you want to copy is highlighted (if working in English, this will probably be NB Standard or NB.KBD, but it can be any keyboard, in any alphabet) and then click Copy.

A suggested description, filename and language for the new keyboard file are provided. Make any changes you want by typing in a different description or filename or by selecting a different language, then click Accept. The new file will automatically be saved in the Nbwin\Users\Default folder and you will be able to load it from the Tools, Keyboards, Select menu option.

The Customize Keyboard dialog will appear, showing the current key assignments. For any changes that you would like to make, enter the new character in the Character to Assign box. Characters can be entered in the Character to Assign box by typing them in, copying and pasting a character from a Nota Bene document or by clicking the Inventory button and selecting a character from Inventory. Once the desired character is in the Character to Assign box, you can click either of the following:

•	Assign New -- this replaces whatever was already on that key with the new character

•	Add to Existing -- this adds the new character to whatever is already assigned to that key (among other functions, this is used to add accents, vowels, modifiers, etc. to a base character, or to have a single key insert a number of characters, even an entire word or phrase)

5	After making all of the changes that you want to make, click OK.

All of the keyboard files are in the Nbwin\Users\Default folder and they have the .kbd extension. The Nota Bene default keyboard is nb.kbd and it is in the Nbwin\Users\Default folder. Nota Bene users with some programming knowledge may want to customize their keyboards by editing this file directly. However, before doing so, you should copy the file under a new name, save it in the same folder as the unchanged original, and make your changes in the renamed copy. This ensures that, if you make a mistake in a keyboard definition and NB refuses to load the keyboard file, you will be able to load your original, unchanged keyboard file instead.

Any file with the extension .kbd in the users\default folder will be displayed in the Select Keyboard Layout dialog and can be loaded through the menus (Tools, Keyboards, Setup/Select Defaults). If you ever upgrade or reinstall the program, nb.kbd, and the other .kbd files that come with the program will be overwritten. Assigning a new name to your personal keyboard file will preserve your customizations.

For more information and examples, see Mary Bernard's notes on keyboard customization.