libeek is a library to create keyboard-like user interface. Since it is designed as simple as possible, it provides only two kind of objects. One is keyboard element (objects derived from #EekElement) and another is keyboard layout engine (objects which implements the #EekLayout interface). A keyboard element represents either a keyboard (#EekKeyboard), a section (#EekSection), or a key (#EekKey). Each element implements the Builder design pattern so that it can map itself to different UI widgets (#ClutterActor, #GtkDrawingArea, aso). A layout engine arranges keyboard elements using information from external configuration mechanisms (libxklavier, XKB, matchbox-keyboard layouts in XML, aso) Here is a sample code which demonstrates (1) keyboard elements are arranged with the system keyboard layout using libxklavier and (2) keyboard elements are mapped into #ClutterActor: EekKeyboard *keyboard; EekLayout *layout; /* Create a keyboard layout using libxklavier configuration. */ layout = eek_xkl_layout_new (); /* Create a keyboard implemented as ClutterActor. */ keyboard = eek_clutter_keyboard_new (); /* Apply the layout to the keyboard. */ eek_keyboard_set_layout (keyboard, layout); clutter_group_add (CLUTTER_GROUP(stage), eek_clutter_keyboard_get_actor (EEK_CLUTTER_KEYBOARD(keyboard))); The most interesting feature of libeek is that developer can choose arbitrary combination of UI toolkits and layout engine supported by libeek. For example, to create a keyboard-like #GtkWidget instead of #ClutterActor, all you need is to replace eek_clutter_keyboard_new() with eek_gtk_keyboard_new() and eek_clutter_keyboard_get_actor() with eek_gtk_keyboard_get_widget(). Similarly, if you want to use XKB configuration directly (without libxklavier), you will only need to replace eek_xkl_layout_new () with eek_xkb_layout_new(). To achieve portability across different UI toolkits, there is a seperate represention of keyboard elements apart from the actual UI widgets. For example, a keyboard is represented as a tree of #EekElement -- #EekKeyboard contains one or more #EekSection's and #EekSection contains one or more #EekKey's. Each element may emit events when user pushes the corresponding UI widget. Here is another sample code which demonstrates logical events on #EekElement: /* Find a key element in the logical keyboard. */ EekKey *key = eek_keyboard_find_key_by_keycode (keyboard, 0x38); g_signal_connect (key, "pressed", on_a_pressed); When user pushed a widget which looks like "a" key (i.e. keycode 0x38), on_a_pressed will be called.