7 ms·

I'm a big fan of the compose key, both for its universality and intuitive "syntax". For many years I endured the pain of a dual French/US keyboard layout (one f

I'm a big fan of the compose key, both for its universality and intuitive "syntax". For many years I endured the pain of a dual French/US keyboard layout (one for writing, the other for coding), until a coworker showed me the special Option-key shortcuts you can use on a Mac to make French accents, and then finally I settled on the nice and intuitive Compose Key support offered natively by Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ComposeKey

TacticalCoder 5y ago
Basically the same here, now I settled on QWERTY with a few tricks to do french diacritic signs. Compose key can be a bit slow at times, so I only use it for the less common characters, like e-circumflex. For the really common ones like e-acute and e-grave I simply assign additional shortcuts: for example hyper+e = e-acute (my keyboard has got additional modifier keys: it's not just ctrl/alt/shift as I've got additional physical keys, which I configured to act as Hyper and Super).
yetanother-1 5y ago
Same issue. I struggeled with french on German keyboard, so I searched how to type everything, and all wad easy except the ç. The only solution was to type ALT+135 from the keypad. It worked until a recent windows update, now I get garbage from that shortcut. I will give this a try, thanks!
- igitur 5y ago
  I had a similar problem recently, but it was self-inflicted. Try changing the status of the "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" checkbox. You can see this option by going to Settings and then: All Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> "Administrative Language Settings"
tasogare 5y ago
I'm using a logical FR layout on a physical Mac FR layout, the underlying layout for Japanese input is QWERTY while the pinyin for Traditional Chinese uses AZERTY... I'm tired of all these context switches and I wish there was an universal keyboard IME that allow me to type the languages I care about without having to switch between IME all the time. Same complains about mobile (iOS). I might build something one day because of how annoying it is (at least typing English is easy from FR keyboard so that's one less keyboard to use).
- numpad0 5y ago
  Can’t you just configure Japanese IME to use the same one as physical keyboard map? Japanese IME shouldn’t be adamant about “keymap goes with language” model.
bombela 5y ago
On Linux/xorg I use the qwerty international layout and a dead compose key for the rarely used symbols. Example: é is "altgr+e", ç is "altgr+", while Ω is "right-ctrl, shift+w" and ⁶ is "right-ctrl,^,6" etc. You can do it all with the compose key. But for typing in french I find altgr+e to be faster than "rightctrl,',e".
- tinus_hn 5y ago
  The difference is if you don’t use these characters a lot, compose+accent, letter is a lot easier to remember than altgr+random key. Especially when it’s not printed on your keyboard.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  I was trying to make a grave accent, opposite direction to an acute, on Win10 - everything I tried seemed to make acute accents ... how do I, please?
  - dhimes 5y ago
    Windows uses what they call "alt codes," where you hold down the alt key and type a numerical code on your numeric keypad. You can find them with a search: here's one site: https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/ https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/ Note that you can't just do an accent and apply it to any character (like compose). You have to put in the code for the accented character.
    - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
      Yes, I thought there had to be a grave accent method like altgr+e makes é, say altgr+ee makes è (it's easy on a touchscreen phone keyboard!).
  - baq 5y ago
    nowadays the easiest way is to google the character by its name and add "unicode", then copy-paste, unless you do it a lot. e.g. "a acute unicode" yields https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00E1 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00E1
gerardvivancos 5y ago
I also use dual layouts and found that switching between US (for coding) and US international (typing with diacritics) is the most comfortable setup for me. Both in Win and Mac switching between both modes is just pressing Ctrl+Space and the US international layout allows me to type all diacritics I use (Catalan) with an US keyboard. Maybe I’m just stating the obvious and everybody already knows and is moving aware from that, so I won’t explain the details. But if someone is interested just let me know
908B64B197 5y ago
> dual French/US keyboard layout (one for writing, the other for coding) Why not use one of the QWERTY layouts with accented characters?

TacticalCoder 5y ago

Basically the same here, now I settled on QWERTY with a few tricks to do french diacritic signs. Compose key can be a bit slow at times, so I only use it for the less common characters, like e-circumflex. For the really common ones like e-acute and e-grave I simply assign additional shortcuts: for example hyper+e = e-acute (my keyboard has got additional modifier keys: it's not just ctrl/alt/shift as I've got additional physical keys, which I configured to act as Hyper and Super).

yetanother-1 5y ago

Same issue. I struggeled with french on German keyboard, so I searched how to type everything, and all wad easy except the ç. The only solution was to type ALT+135 from the keypad. It worked until a recent windows update, now I get garbage from that shortcut. I will give this a try, thanks!

igitur 5y ago
I had a similar problem recently, but it was self-inflicted. Try changing the status of the "Beta: Use Unicode UTF-8 for worldwide language support" checkbox. You can see this option by going to Settings and then: All Settings -> Time & Language -> Language -> "Administrative Language Settings"

tasogare 5y ago

I'm using a logical FR layout on a physical Mac FR layout, the underlying layout for Japanese input is QWERTY while the pinyin for Traditional Chinese uses AZERTY... I'm tired of all these context switches and I wish there was an universal keyboard IME that allow me to type the languages I care about without having to switch between IME all the time. Same complains about mobile (iOS). I might build something one day because of how annoying it is (at least typing English is easy from FR keyboard so that's one less keyboard to use).

numpad0 5y ago
Can’t you just configure Japanese IME to use the same one as physical keyboard map? Japanese IME shouldn’t be adamant about “keymap goes with language” model.

bombela 5y ago

On Linux/xorg I use the qwerty international layout and a dead compose key for the rarely used symbols. Example: é is "altgr+e", ç is "altgr+", while Ω is "right-ctrl, shift+w" and ⁶ is "right-ctrl,^,6" etc. You can do it all with the compose key. But for typing in french I find altgr+e to be faster than "rightctrl,',e".

tinus_hn 5y ago
The difference is if you don’t use these characters a lot, compose+accent, letter is a lot easier to remember than altgr+random key. Especially when it’s not printed on your keyboard.
pbhjpbhj 5y ago
I was trying to make a grave accent, opposite direction to an acute, on Win10 - everything I tried seemed to make acute accents ... how do I, please?
- dhimes 5y ago
  Windows uses what they call "alt codes," where you hold down the alt key and type a numerical code on your numeric keypad. You can find them with a search: here's one site: https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/ https://sites.psu.edu/symbolcodes/windows/codealt/ Note that you can't just do an accent and apply it to any character (like compose). You have to put in the code for the accented character.
  - pbhjpbhj 5y ago
    Yes, I thought there had to be a grave accent method like altgr+e makes é, say altgr+ee makes è (it's easy on a touchscreen phone keyboard!).
- baq 5y ago
  nowadays the easiest way is to google the character by its name and add "unicode", then copy-paste, unless you do it a lot. e.g. "a acute unicode" yields https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00E1 https://www.compart.com/en/unicode/U+00E1

gerardvivancos 5y ago

I also use dual layouts and found that switching between US (for coding) and US international (typing with diacritics) is the most comfortable setup for me. Both in Win and Mac switching between both modes is just pressing Ctrl+Space and the US international layout allows me to type all diacritics I use (Catalan) with an US keyboard. Maybe I’m just stating the obvious and everybody already knows and is moving aware from that, so I won’t explain the details. But if someone is interested just let me know

908B64B197 5y ago

> dual French/US keyboard layout (one for writing, the other for coding) Why not use one of the QWERTY layouts with accented characters?