Once you have created a keyboard layout, you will want to install it so that it is available to application programs. Once installed and selected, a keystroke listener application is able to monitor keys pressed and produce appropriate output. On MAC systems, this process is easy, because tbese systems automatically make use of .keylayout files for defining keyboard layouts. Just click on MacintoshHD, navigate to the Library folder, and then to the Keyboard Layouts folder. Put the desired .keylayout files into that folder.
Windows Systems have a different default mechanism for keyboard layouts. These require a special Microsoft program to compile and create a keyboard dll file. Another alternative is to create keyboards with a commercial program like that provided by Tavultesoft. The ELK project provides a third alternative. Drop the .keylayout file into the Documents/acornsFiles/keyLayoutFiles folder. If that folder doesn't exict create the Documents/Acorns/keyLayoutFiles folder and drop them there.Then execute the ElkKeyboards application. This program will allow you to select among the available keyboard layouts and alternate between them if you have more than one. It listens and modifies keystrokes before they are received by Windows application programs, like Word or Notepad.
If you are using ACORNS for language revitalization, it seamlessly utilize ELK keyboards and .ttf font files. In fact, this was the original motivation for the ELK project. That is, we desire to use a single, XML-based way to describe keyboard layouts that will work on all platforms. We also want users to be able to create web-based language lessons, and not require them install keylayouts or custom fonts on their local systems.
Note that although ACORNS and ELK runs on all platforms, the ElkKeyboards application, at this time, does not support UNIX-based systems. It is not needed on Mac-based systems because keyboard layout support is already integrated into those operating systems.