Because a keyboard has a fixed number of keys. If you want to have a bunch of letters of the alphabet with any the diacritics on top, you run out of keys very

Because a keyboard has a fixed number of keys. If you want to have a bunch of letters of the alphabet with any the diacritics on top, you run out of keys very very quickly. Dead keys are the sane solution to that question. Also, regarding ß, I've got it in two ways: "AltGr + s," or the sequence "Compose, s, s." By the way, Compose is the ultimate dead key.