Дворак

Ukrainian Dvorak keyboard layout for Mac

This is a homophonic keyboard layout for English-language Dvorak typists who want to type in Ukrainian. So far, I know of one.

Just switch from your normal Dvorak keyboard layout to Дворак, and sound out the Ukrainian words as you type. Most letters are in the same place as their sound-alike English letter. For example, the home row has the Ukrainian letters А О Е У I Д Г Т Н С where Dvorak has A O E U I D H T N S. Some letters with no direct equivalent are in the look-alike position: Cyrillic Х and Ш replace Latin X and W. Oddball soft sign Ь replaces oddball letter Q.

But the Cyrillic alphabet has more letters than the Latin, you protest? Modified sounds are typed using the option key. For example, Я is typed option-А. Similarly, Є is under Е, Ю У, Ї I, Ч Ц, Щ Ш, and Ж under the З. This pattern is extended as well as possible to cover Cyrillic letters for other languages and historical letters.

Numbers and punctuation mostly remain the same as for both the US English and Dvorak keyboard layout. The hryvnia symbol ₴ replaces the cent sign ¢. Command keys are unchanged from the standard Dvorak layout.

Layout

Location of the normal Cyrillic keys on the keyboard

Дворак keyboard layout, showing differences from regular Dvorak

Location of the normal Cyrillic keys on the keyboard with the option key depressed

Дворак with the option key depressed

Download

Click to download dvorak-uk.zip to your machine. The archive contains a readme file dvorak-uk readme.rtf, a Mac keyboard layout file Дворак.keylayout, and a Mac icon file Дворак.icns.

Installation

Decompress the zip archive. On Mac OS X, copy the keyboard layout and the icon file into one of the Library folders on your Mac. Put it into /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ to share with all users, or ~/Library/Keyboard Layouts/ for convenient backup and copying of your own user folder.

References

Colophon

Keyboard layout created using Ukelele.