[sil_colombia_venezuela] New keyboard: sil_colombia_venezuela

[joserosas-silamericas]

Summary

This PR adds a new unified keyboard for Indigenous languages of Colombia and Venezuela.

Details

• ID: sil_colombia_venezuela
• Name: Teclado Unificado Indígena (Colombia y Venezuela)
• Languages: Supports 60+ languages (Wayuunaiki, Barí, Yukpa, Sikuani, etc.) using BCP 47 tags.
• Copyright: SIL Global.
• Features: Includes Andika font, touch layout, and rotation/deadkey input methods.

[keyman-server]

Thank you for your pull request. You'll see a "build failed" message until the Keyman team has reviewed the pull request and manually initiated the build process.

Every change committed to this branch will become part of this pull request. When you have finished submitting files and are ready for the Keyman team to review this pull request, please post a "Ready for review" comment.

PLEASE NOTE: team capacity for review is limited in December 2025 and will resume in January 2026. We appreciate your patience.

[joserosas-silamericas]

Ready for review

[LornaSIL]

I haven't checked your keyboard, but in general it looks like a very helpful keyboard for a lot of languages! I do have comments, some/most of them are more related to our keyboard repo structure that needs to be followed.

• Any keyboard that begins with sil_ should go in the release/sil/ folder rather than release/s/. That just helps us know where to find things.
  • Any keyboard in sil is generally assumed to be copyright SIL Global. In this case LICENSE.md has © 2022 Andrea Jerónimo, José Rosas. Since in other locations you have it copyrighted to SIL GlobalI assume you should changeLICENSE.mdtoCopyright © 2022-2025 SIL Global. Yes, you do need to add the word Copyright` at the front of the line. Our build system fails without that!
• HISTORY.md seems to have remnants from a prior version. It's fine to leave that there, but add a new entry with today's date and add "submitted to Keyman repository" or something like that.
• We have found that distributing different versions of fonts is bad practice. So, we prefer you to not include Andika-R.ttf in your pull request, but reference the fonts in the shared folder here instead: release/shared/fonts/sil/andika. (I see you have cloned the whole repo, so it shouldn't be hard to reference those fonts in your .kps.)
• Lastly, any keyboard in the release folder needs to have an online help file. That would be a file called sil_colombia_venezuela.php that is in the sil_colombia_venezuela/source/help folder. Instructions are here: https://help.keyman.com/developer/keyboards/phphelpfile I'm willing to help you come up with the right files if you need help after making the other changes.

Hope this isn't too much. Once you make those changes I'll actually test the keyboard.

[joserosas-silamericas]

Hello, thank you very much for the instructions.
Ready for review.

I have made all the requested changes:

1. Project moved: The entire keyboard package has been moved from “release/s/” to “release/sil/” to match the naming convention.
2. License and history: I have updated the header “LICENSE.md” to “Copyright © 2025 SIL Global” and cleaned up “HISTORY.md” (I have removed old entries and names).
3. Fonts: I removed the local font file from the source folder. The .kps file now references the shared font at ../shared/fonts/sil/andika/Andika-R.ttf.
4. Help file: I added the required sil_colombia_venezuela.php file to the source/help/ folder.

I am available if anything was not done correctly or if I need to do anything else.

[LornaSIL]

Thanks for updating the files. It's looking good. I do have some feedback.

• There are several places where the version number exists. I'd really prefer you didn't include versioning anywhere except in the HISTORY.md file and the .kmn file. Otherwise, those other places get forgotten. For instance, I don't think README.md or even readme.htm need the versioning information.
• A description of the keyboard should go into README.md. You can use the same text you included in the .kps
• The copyright year only needs to be in LICENSE.md. If you leave it out elsewhere we don't have to remember to update it. I saw it in the .kmn, .kps, readme.htm and the php file
• In .kmn, you can just select "any" for the targets and remove all the others.
• In the touch layout:
  • If the tablet and phone are exactly the same layouts, one of them should be deleted. This reduces the amount of work needed to keep the keyboards updated. If you only have a phone layout, it will still work on a tablet, and vice versa.
    • There are some required keys that must be on each layer. These are: K_LOPT and K_BKSP. I expect you removed them to save space, but we do require they be on each layer. You can see the messages about this when you compile the keyboard.
  • In the .kps:
    • In your list of files you reference LICENSE.md in the source folder, but in reality it's in the root of sil_colombia_venezuela. Once you remove that file reference, and then add it back in from the right place, you'll have to add it back in on the details tab. Sorry :(
    • None of your language tags need the Latn script (none of these languages have another script usage) and except for es, there's no reason to include 419. I think you could use the minimal tag for all of the languages which would be the 3 letter code. (You could manually edit those in the source tab which might be easier. The reason you might want to make the change is that if they ever add a lexical model, or if an app ever adds spell checking, the minimal tag is what will likely be used.) The only language tag you may want to keep would be es-419 since you are specifically wanting the Latin American version of Spanish.

I think that's it. The keyboard and documentation all look great except for these minor issues I've mentioned.

[joserosas-silamericas]

Thanks for the instructions.
I just didn't make one of the changes you mention, about the Latn tags for each language. Actually, I would like to ask you to allow me to leave it as it is. Let me explain why:

The thing is, I have finished my .kmn code and have been testing it since December. I had different types of problems and, after investigating the reason, I understand that it was because, at the Windows level, the OS gets confused about which base language to associate with the keyboard, despite all the other settings. What happened to me in the tests on three laptops was that after a period of use (minutes or hours), the Keyman keyboard would deactivate and the layout would switch to US English (which is very confusing to use in South America), the name of the keyboard in the Windows language bar would change to something strange, and when I clicked on it, the menu would open on the left side of the screen. This could not be solved by restarting; the only way was to either delete and reinstall (after doing this 3 or 4 times, it no longer worked either), or open Keyman Configuration and try to link it to Spanish as the base.
Looking for a solution on the Web, I found this space to specifically indicate that each language must be linked to a Latn layout to prevent Windows from “getting confused.” Since I applied this, I haven't had the problem again.

(On a separate note, on other keyboards that Spanish-speaking colleagues made locally, this issue of Windows ‘confusing’ the keyboard layout is so common that it has discouraged us from even reaching this point of seeking to publish it. I believe that adding Latn in our case could fix the problem for others).

Pepe.

[LornaSIL]

I'll go ahead and approve this. Thanks for being so responsive!
I hope you'll follow up with the Keyman team on what we consider a bug with language tagging. Not sure if it's Windows or a Keyman bug though!

LGTM

[LornaSIL]

Your keyboard is online now: https://keyman.com/keyboards/sil_colombia_venezuela

[joserosas-silamericas]

Oh Fabuloso (Fabulous).
Thank you very much.
And yes, I will try to replicate the issue I mentioned to you so I can discuss it with the Keyman team.

Saludos,
Pepe.