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Comment by rodelrod | Hacker News Reader

You are talking about a different layout, which I also dislike.

I'm talking about "AltGr dead keys", in which the quotes are available directly and the accents are entered using e.g. AltGr-'.

I'm using 6 european languages occasionally, of which 3 every day, including French. Of these, Canadian English would be only useful for French (e.g. it does not have a tilde dead key AFAIK) and is still different enough from US to be annoying for programming (e.g. the angle brackets are in the "wrong place"). Certainly a big upgrade from AZERTY though!

EDIT: My remark on the Canadian English layout above is based on the first layout that showed up when I googled it, but now I noticed that a lot of different variants come up in the search and I don't know which one you're using. In any event, they all seem to be weaker either for programming or for non-FR/EN languages or both.

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I can't find any "AltGr dead keys" variant on the OSX I'm using at the moment, I'll check later on Linux. I don't have any keyboard with a key marked "AltGr" either btw :).

However, the canadian english variant I'm using definitely has a ~ key and accepts alt+n for ñ. Concerning angle brackets they are at the same position as on a standard US layout.

I assume that we are using different operating systems and that they use the same name for different layouts.

> can't find any "AltGr dead keys" variant on the OSX I'm using at the moment

I don't use OSX, sorry. Maybe try https://github.com/xv0x7c0/osx-us-altgr-intl

> I don't have any keyboard with a key marked "AltGr" either btw :).

That's the right alt (not to be confused with the alt right).

> the canadian english variant I'm using definitely has a ~ key

Can you type "ã" or "õ"?

I'm not saying it's the optimal solution, in fact my custom layout works slightly better for myself. However, learning how to build that custom layout in both Linux and Windows took me time that would have been better spent elsewhere.

All I'm saying is that people in the same situation I was in (programmer writing daily in multiple Western European languages), this obscure-niche-that-nobody-seems-to-know-about layout will serve you fine 100% of the times, whatever the language, without you spending ungodly hours coming up with your own.

> That's the right alt (not to be confused with the alt right).

I laughed, thanks for that.

> Can you type "ã" or "õ"?

on OSX' Canadian English yes, AltGr+n followed by a/o.

On the other hand, after paying closer attention to the behavior of the layout with the same name on Linux, there are annoying discrepancies and "English (intl. with AltGr dead keys)" is indeed pretty nice for me too. Thanks for the pointer, I may adopt it too.

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