Gothic keyboard layout for Mac

Update 2020-02-19: A newer Keyboard Layout with more IPA characters is available from this page. It is recommended over the one below, unless you wish to write runes or use the special characters used for text critical mark-up in Nestlé Aland’s Greek NT.

Type in Latin, Wulfilan, IPA and Runic.
This one was made primarily for Nordic keyboards, so to an American or German user, for example, the location of some characters will feel unintuitive.

The modifiers are as follows:
None: Type in lower-case Latin script, except ö is ƕ and § is þ.
Shift: Half-Wulfilan compatibility-mode. Where a similar character exists in another script, it is used, or else the Wulfilan character is used.
Caps-lock: 100% Wulfilan
Caps-lock + shift: Latin upper-case
Alt: IPA phonetic script, focusing on sounds that are common in Gothic
Alt + shift: More IPA phonetic
Alt + caps-lock: Runic

Unlike Nordic layouts, combining diacritics are added after a letter by pushing the relevant key, and dead-keys are not used. For example: to write , you push e first, and then ́.
Space is not always space, but with some modifiers ‘non-breaking space’ and in the runic plane it is a dot as runic script often separate words by dots.

Download here! (200 kb)

Installation

If you are a complete beginner with computers you are advised not to try.

1. Download gutisk.dmg.
2. Double-click the file to mount it (it is a disk-image).
3. In Finder, press command + n to open a new Finder-window.
4. In the new Finder-window, hold down Alt and click the menu named “Go”. Among the items in the menu there should be a “Library” folder.
5. Select Library, then enter the folder called “Keyboard Layouts” in the Libraryfolder.
6. Move the Gutisks.bundle thingy from the first Finder-window to the Keyboard Layouts folder.
7. Open System Settings, click the keyboard and select the “Imput Sources”-panel.
8. Use the + button in the lower left corner to add the new Keyboard Layout Gutisk.
9. Make sure the “Show input menu..” something alternative is checked.
10. Log out and in again.
11. You should now be able to select Gutisk from the flag-menu that you find next to the clock.

6 comments

    1. Ouch! I need to look into this.
      Do you have time to provide more info such as OS-version and on which step it crashes?

      1. I currently have Yosemite 10.10.4.

        It crashes when I open keyboard preferences, click the + button, and select Gothic.

      2. Apologies!!
        I had accidentally uploaded an older experimental copy of the file instead of the final product.

        If you delete the old file gutisks.dmg & Gutisk.bundle, and download the new disc image: gutisk.dmg, it has pretty good chances of working.

  1. This is an excellent keyboard – is there any way to make it available to windows? I am not myself familiar with how much work this would take, so apologies if it’s an unreasonable request.

    1. Thanks! 🙂
      The way I understand it, Windows installs keyboard layouts as part of “Language Packs” and Microsoft prefers to supply these by themselves. I i r c Microsoft offered a Gothic language pack, and I concluded that probably very few users would pick mine over one provided by Microsoft if I were to make one.

      Since I have managed to avoid Windows completely since 2015, it would be much easier for an actual Windows user to produce a Gothic keyboardlayout for Windows than for me. I would probably be available with advice if needed and we could link to each other.

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