I do a lot of work by remote on client's servers.  An issue I face with using colemak is mapping the keyboard layout on the remote machine.  These are business clients I work with, and many of them would not appreciate me running "unknown" programs on their secure enterprise servers.  So running colemak.exe or installing a new keyboard layout are pretty much out of the question.  In fact I'd prefer not to have to do anything at all on the remote machine.  It would be better if I could just connect, and it would just map my local keyboard layout to whatever layout the remote machine has.

RDP doesn't do this, apparently it used to, sometimes...  But the newest versions do not at all, according to my testing and experimentation.  I've also been through the whole list of rdp registry settings and there is nothing there that's of any use.

Anyway, I've found a solution that works.  It's not perfect, but it's a very good solution until I can find something else.  I use Google Chrome as my primary browser, and there is a Chrome Plugin called: "Chrome RDP".  I installed that, and tested it out, and it instantly works.  No changes or customizations or settings needed at all, it just works.  It is missing some features from the real rdp client, like clipboard integration, which is why I say it's not perfect.

I think this works because it is entirely software based, so it's actually working from your local windows keyboard layout.  Compared to the real RDP client, which is a little bit more hardware/kernel based, and so it bypasses your windows layout.  So, I'd be willing to bet that many third party rdp clients would work in the same way.

Can anyone else share their experiences with this?  Any other rdp clients that are known to work without modifying the remote computer?  Or possibly modifications to the local rdp client that can make it work?