Install just the keyboard layouts from Logitech's drivers

Nov 16, '07 07:30:04AM

Contributed by: StrangeNoise

Logitech's drivers have been implicated in failures to install Leopard, and certainly as a result of reading about those issues, I have no intention of installing them again on my Leopard systems. (I did a clean install, so the blue screen problem didn't actually hit me.)

However, I can't type on the standard (latest) Apple desktop keyboards, and much prefer my Unicomp buckling-springs one. But Apple's keyboard layouts don't actually match PC keyboards very well. So although I do *have* a Logitech mouse, I was only installing the drivers in order to get at the Logitech keyboard layouts.

You see, the Logitech keyboard and mouse drivers are only necessary to drive the special function keys that festoon Logitech equipment; but just to get the normal typing keys mapped correctly, you only need the basic layouts. It turns out you can just install those keyboard layouts, and quite easily.

If you're comfortable in Terminal, this single command will do everything you need to do in one shot (assuming you've downloaded the drivers):

unzip -j ~/Downloads/lcc231.zip '*LCCKCHR.rsrc' -d '~/Library/Keyboard Layouts'
For the command-line averse, keep reading for a much longer way of doing it through the Finder -- but one that doesn't require Terminal at all. By the way, this hint will work just fine on earlier versions of Mac OS X; it's just that on Leopard it's necessary to avoid installing the Logitech software; at least until Logitech updates their driver software for 10.5.

For an alternative that only caters for UK English users (like myself), you can go here and install the UK keyboard layouts supplied there. That's the posting that gave me enough clues to do the above with the Logitech layouts. As a result, I've not actually tried the UK English layouts on that posting, but if they work for you, that would be even simpler.

Here's the non-Terminal solution:

  1. Go to the Logitech site and download the Logitech Control Center package as normal (currently lcc231.zip)
  2. Unpack it to get the Logitech Control Center Installer
  3. Don't run it. Instead, control-click on it and pick Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
  4. Open Contents, then Resources.
  5. Control-click on Logitech Control Center.pkg and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu.
  6. Open Contents then Resources.
  7. Control-click on the Logitech.bundle and choose Show Package Contents from the pop-up menu. (We're nearly there. Remember, there's a single-line command posted above that you can enter into Terminal to do the whole thing.)
  8. Open Contents then Resources
  9. Drag the file LCCKCHR.rsrc into your home folder's Library/Keyboard Layouts folder (create this folder if necessary).
That's it. Now you can open the International system preferences pane and go to the Input menu and see the fifteen-or-so Logitech keyboard layouts.

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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071102162602375