klc2kbd - convert MSKLC keyboard layouts to Windows 95/98/Me

[BulbulatorMacher]

Hi, I've created a tool to convert Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator files for use in Windows 95/98/Me.
MSKLC requires Windows 2000, Xp or later while Windows 9x uses different format for keyboard layouts.
There are keyboard layout editors for Windows 9x but are quite old, unsupported and paid version is required to access all of the features.

This tool supports majority of the MSKLC features including AltGr, SGCAPS, dead keys, ligatures and more.
Custom keyboard layouts can now easily be created for Windows 95/98/Me.

Source code and instructions are available at https://github.com/BulbulatorMacher/klc2kbd
If you find any issues or have questions or suggestions please leave a message here or on the github page

 

[bocke]

Oh, that's cool. Especially for languages that were not supported directly by MS outside of PE edition. For example, in some countries you couldn't buy PE edition directly, but only US or UK edition.

Of those shareware tools, one from my country was pretty popular in localization circles: Janko's Keyboard Generator. The author released it as "public domain" in 2007. Which in practice is more of a freeware license. Might be helpfull to some:

Janko's Keyboard Generator For Windows 95, 98 and ME Home

P.S. I also starred your GitHub repository and am keeping an eye on it.

 

[BulbulatorMacher]

The official public domain version of Janko's Keyboard Generator is the lowest-tier one, without advanced features. I've seen the Professional version in one of the GitHub repositories. It has been removed since (however, you can still access it through git history). Even the most advanced version doesn't support all the features of the kbd format - it crashed while opening one of the more advanced layouts generated by klc2kbd (layout worked correctly in Windows 98).

GitHub - rimas-kudelis/windows-keyboard-layouts: Improved Lithuanian keyboard layouts for Windows

Improved Lithuanian keyboard layouts for Windows. Contribute to rimas-kudelis/windows-keyboard-layouts development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

 

[MiaM]

Maybe I'm exposing my lack of knowledge here, but would it be possible for a tool like this to read files that are ready made install packages for additional keyboard layouts for XP/Windows 7, and massage them in a way that can be loaded into the MSKLC editor?

P.S. if you want an idea for a major feature creep, you could add support for keyboard layout files used in for example Linux and/or other OS:es.

 

[BulbulatorMacher]

It seems that MSKLC already has most of the features mentioned here - it can load existing layouts and make install packages for Windows XP/7/8/10. klc2kbd picks up on that and allows converting it to use with Windows 95/98/Me. It is best for a tool to do a single job, but do it best.

Converting the other way around makes little sense: Win 9x system layouts are basically the same as Xp/7/10 (and there are fewer of them), and custom layouts for 9x are basically non-existent (or it would be faster to recreate them in MSKLC). Linux uses a completely different system altogether.

I could see a point in automating somewhat registry editing on Win 9x while installing a new layout, as currently it is quite involved, but the user would still need two machines and run two programs - one on Windows 9x and one on Xp/7/10

 

[MiaM]

My specific use case for "forward conversion" is that the Finnish Multilingual keyboard layout were provided by Microsoft for Windows XP and Windows 7, but I never ever got the Windows 7 version to work. It would be nice to get it going on a modern Windows 10/11 computer, without having to recreate it manually.
(It was an attempt at making Finnish+Swedish users able to type more or less all characters used by other languages that are based on the same a-zA-Z alphabet, without needing to use alt+numeric code. I.E. as an example simply holding AltGr switches åäö to the danish/norwegian counterparts

It seems like the files have been scrubbed from Microsoft's site and are only available on sites that have a strong malware aura though.

(IIRC Linux distributions tend to use this layout. I've found no downside of using it, but in theory there might be software that uses AltGr+letter combinations for shortcuts that conflicts with this layout).