One of the missing free and open-source applications is a GUI tool that helps create keyboard layouts. Currently, a user has to edit the layout file by hand using a text editor, which is both cumbersome and error-prone.

The GUI tool will be able to create a new or import existing keyboard layouts and export a formatted new version. The user will be presented with a keyboard and auxiliary windows covering Unicode blocks, and will be able to drag and drop characters on individual keys.

A wizard will be able to help with initial choices such as how many levels the layout requires, whether to include any generic layout snippets and so on.

A command line version of the tool will also be available (derived from the GUI tool) to perform correctness tests on existing layouts.

Finally, the tool should allow to be extended in the future to allow creating keyboard layouts for SCIM.

The project page is at

http://code.google.com/p/keyboardlayouteditor/