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Comment by afiori | Hacker News Reader

Hi, as someone interested in typography I am interested in how and why you wrote a ‘ (U+2018 LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK) instead of a ' (U+0027 APOSTROPHE) or a ` (U+0060 GRAVE ACCENT)? Is it used by a language on your system? is it in your keyboard? Or maybe a conscious typographical statement of proper style? I wonder :)

Personally I have had my dose of fighting with using multiple languages with incompatible keyboards layouts, I would like to hear your story (even if it has nothing to do with keyboard layouts)

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I find a compose key (see Wikipedia) quite helpful for diacritics, em dashes, &c.—once you get the hang of it, it’s really quite fast and intuitive. One can even add new combinations.

I recently left the linux world and with it the compose key... the most similar (native) thing windows offers are dead keys which I find deeply abhorring.

I settled on switching keyboard layouts with Windows+space.

I was more curious about the why than the how in a sense.

I use Windows, and haven't used Linux for years. It's probably just a matter of time before I go back, and when I do I know I'll love the compose key.

However, the workaround I use on Windows is Alt key combinations: I memorized the dozen or so patterns [1] I use the most. For example, `Alt + 0160` for non-breaking space, `Alt + 0150` for en dash, `Alt + 26` (and a few more) for arrows and `Alt + 0133` for ellipsis. It must seem crazy when you're used to the compose key.

I haven't heard of dead keys as a workaround. How does it compare? (Wow, this is getting very far from the original topic…)

[1] An important key to memorizing them is to see them as patterns on the numpad, rather than a sequence of digits.

dead keys are an hack that implement a feature of old typewriters. On a computer it simply disables the keys for accents and combine the accent with the next letter, the catch is that if you want to write the accent character (',`,^," etc.) you have to press the key twice, as the first press does nothing.

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