Writing non-English languages with a QWERTY keyboard

Haha, I was reading the first section and scratching my head, thinking: “Why so complicated? Just use the International AltGr dead keys mapping. It is so much easier.”

OP invented the International AltGr dead keys layout and this is the story.

It's worth noting that the concept of a "Compose" key seems to have originated on DEC's specialized word-processors (physical machines which just did text editing), and that when Windows came on the scene, someone at DEC created "COMPOSE.EXE" which brought that functionality to Windows --- it continued working up through very late Windows 95 betas, then was broken and never updated.

There was a replacement in "AllChars" which is still on Sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/projects/allchars/ but hasn't been updated for a while.

Looks like:

https://wincompose.info/

is up-to-date, and if I wrote more, would definitely try out, but these days, either I write the accented character w/ a stylus, type out the LaTeX command, or use the on-screen keyboard via touchscreen.

For my language I've been using a US layout with a similar alteration for years as well on Windows and Linux: AltGr+C = Č, and AltGr+V = Ć (the second one is much less common, basically only used for writing names). Similar for Š, Ž and Đ, I stopped bothering with stuff like á because I need them maybe once every couple of years.

My point being: wow, I've never thought about standardizing the layout, what a marvelous thought. Not for the general public perhaps, but for some programmers it would be a godsend. The whole terminal is basically non-ergonomic on other layouts. Stuff like ./ is right together on the US layout. Similar for coding. I preach to my fellow developers and they see my point but most won't go outside of what's provided by the OS for some reason.

I don't know enough about other European languages from my "region" to make a more general standard (though I suspect it wouldn't be as simple as creating a single "eastern" one, I doubt e.g. Hungarian and Polish have so much in common) but it's a good idea, something that could be collaborated on.

The default Mac approach is IMHO superior in this. Just select the regular US keyboard, you have deadkeys available if you need them by pressing “alt”+symbol (e.g. “o” to have the dieresis symbol), then press the vowel you want to modify. But if you don’t know better, it’s just a regular US layout, and it’s always there, by default, on every computer (including that of your colleagues).

I know that hn is heavily populated by people from the USA, that the author is dutch but a non-english language would be... every other language beside English.

Commenting on the actual text, his solution for the cedilla is awkward and is one of the first things I disable on any computer, because it is a extremely common letter in portuguese.

I do not really get the point of layouts such as altgr-intl tbh (even without dead keys). It is fine if you want to write here and there the name of a person that includes non-english characters, but I cannot write actual text in that. Whenever I encounter this layout somewhere I just find it annoying even in english, though I guess dead keys is what actually makes it annoying.

Without dead keys it is def better, but even then I cannot write in said non-english language with that, instead of using one actual layout for that language, and I do not see why not just change layout. Granted, there are some small annoyances because punctuation marks may change place, but I find that easier to learn than using altgr to write letters.

I'm Portuguese and have lived in the UK for over a decade.

UK keyboard layouts suck for writing Portuguese, because they lack convenient ways to type all the diacritics. Portuguese layouts (especially on macOS) suck horrendously for programming (curly braces and square brackets are inordinately annoying to type).

These days, all my physical keyboards are US (ANSI) layouts, and I use the US International (with dead keys) layout exclusively. It's the only relatively sane option that allows me to write both code and all the natural languages I'm liable to write on any given day (read: English, Portuguese, and some random French or German loanwords here and there).

Been using a very similar (in idea) layout: https://eurkey.steffen.bruentjen.eu/

The main difference seems to be in positioning of different characters on a quick glance?

Its extremely difficult to type hindi / sanskrit on qwerty boards.

even the article only talks of european languagues.

someone needs to find a better solution.

I have a standard English keyboard but I have mapped it in my mind with the German layout which includes ä, ö, ü and some other differences. As long as I don’t actually look at the keys I can write really fast with it, years of practice I guess…

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