Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrzool | Hacker News Reader

As multilingual user constantly switching between 3 languages, that's why I fully committed to the US_intl keyboard layout a while ago and ditched the abomination that is QWERTZ. Took a while to get used to, but overall it has been a very noticeable improvement. One layout to cover all languages, no more constant switching.

Edit for clarity: I type "a to get ä and 'a to get à. If I want to type actual quotes followed by a vocal I need to “confirm” the quotes with space before typing the vocal. That’s all there is to it, really.

View on HN

It may work for you, but there are users of languages that simply cannot be covered by QWERTY, and in these cases they would like from developers to simply fix their goddamn code, and bind to keys, not characters.

You are correct. It works for me.

For me too, maybe we should containerize users

They'll containerize themselves when they see basic shortcuts not working, no action necessary.

It works for you now.

For various reasons, I've been switching both in hardware and software between two different QWERTY (US and UK) and two non-English keyboard layouts for years (usually, I'll have multiple keyboard layouts configured, but I'll generally go with the one that is actually printed on the keys unless I really need a different one).

The funny thing is that for all the getting used to different layouts, the one thing that really trips me up all the time is the different hand positioning for Control+C on Mac vs PC. Luckily, you can change the modifier key bindings in MacOS independently from the keyboard layout. But yeah, shortcuts that assume everyone has a / or whatever key are a pain too.

It is fine as long as you don't have to user other people computers.

I used a QWERTY keyboard in France for a while, but switching back and forth between AZERTY and QWERTY each time I went on someone else computer, which happened often, I had to switch, qnd it is qnnoying.

You can learn to touch type but keep in mind that not all layouts are the same, you can bring your own keyboard, change the mapping, etc... There are solutions, but it wasn't worth it for me, so I got back to that terrible AZERTY keyboard because that's what everyone has in France.

BYOK ;)

I envy you for all your languages using Latin-based alphabets. I guess I'm stuck with two keyboard layouts for life because I need to be able to type in both Latin and Cyrillic.

Yes, this. Though I prefer the X11 compose sequence business where you type <Compose>'a to get á and so on. X11 compose sequences are a lot more intuitive than the Windows U.S. international keyboard because there's no ambiguities, so, for example, a cedille is just <Compose>,c whereas in the Windows U.S. international keyboard layout it's 'c -- X11 for the win here, as the latter is super a) counter-intuitive and b) conflicts with ć (U+0107).

Also, if you program or use a shell, then the Windows U.S. international keyboard layout is just unspeakably unbearable.

> Though I prefer the X11 compose sequence business where you type <Compose>'a to get á and so on. X11 compose sequences are a lot more intuitive than the Windows U.S. international keyboard because there's no ambiguities, so, for example, a cedille is just <Compose>,c whereas in the Windows U.S. international keyboard layout it's 'c

That sounds pretty good indeed. Any idea how could I go about setting this up under macOS?

> Also, if you program or use a shell, then the Windows U.S. international keyboard layout is just unspeakably unbearable.

I have indeed a couple of little, weird problems when working in the terminal. That's inconvenient but still beats switching between 3 layouts 50 times a day.

> Any idea how could I go about setting this up under macOS?

Sorry, no idea, but I'd expect it to be possible on OS X. And I really want this for Windows, too, as I have to use it.

> I have indeed a couple of little, weird problems when working in the terminal. That's inconvenient but still beats switching between 3 layouts 50 times a day.

Oof, I can't get used to having to type '' to make one ', "" to make one ", `` to make one `, in the shell, in $EDITOR, etc. It's too painful. So I switch layouts as needed, and I hate it. Compose keys would be so much better!

That’s quite memorable. On the Mac I have to press option-u and then a, u, or o to get an ä, ü, or ö. Optionally holding the shift key to get an uppercase vowel with the diacritic.

option-` is for grave (è) option-i is for circumflex (é) option-n is for eñe (ñ) option-c is for cédille (ç)

When you called QWERTZ an abomination I simply had to upvote your comment.

I used to be pretty good at those but now I just use the feature that works (almost) everywhere in Mac OS and iPhone - press and hold the character to get a little pop-up of options: møøśę

It's slow if you have to type in another language, but in English it's fast "enough" for words like résumé.

I am on macOS as well and the diacritics I mentioned ("a → ä, `a → à) work out of the box with the "US International PC" layout. If I press ⌥a I get å with my layout.

I for some reason have a very low tolerance for dead keys. Two keypresses for one common letter becomes too much.

Thankfully I only need to write in two languages. With almost the same script.

Yup, did the same. And the layout I happen to work with also has a third layer (menu button) that includes äöüß--that was a glorious discovery.

I do you enable the third layer? I don't have a menu button on my Mac.

Do you pick the "a for an umlaut? It seems like :a would be be typed less commonly than "a, so less need to confirm the punctuation.

I didn't pick it, that's how the layout works out of the box. I agree that :a would be probably more convenient.

How do you type ä ö ü ß ?

⌥u creates the two dots, then you press the key for the vowel to put underneath.

⌥s creates the ß.

(Both obviously only applicable for Macs)

Applicable to linux if you set the mac qwerty keyboard layout, which is surprisingly convenient.

That would be… inconvenient. That’s not how I use it. I type "a to get ä and 'a to get à. If I want to type actual quotes followed by a vocal I need to “confirm” the quotes with space before typing the vocal.

On a mac keyboard you can just long-press?

I've never had that work reliably for me, across three completely different Mac installs. :/

It works in "most places" but not in others (like (some) terminals, for example).

    defaults write -g ApplePressAndHoldEnabled -bool true

Might help if it got turned off.

This kind of thing usually only works in native apps that use NSTextView for text input, which is unfortunately not all of them.

That's fine if you live elsewhere and type your Danish colleague Lærke's name once in a while, but if you speak a language using non-ASCII characters it feels rather slow to long-press every few characters.

> Danmark, officielt Kongeriget Danmark, er et land i Skandinavien og en suveræn stat. Det er den sydligste af de skandinaviske nationer, sydvest for Sverige og syd for Norge, og det grænser op til Tyskland mod syd. Grønland og Færøerne indgår også i den danske stat som rigsdele med selvstyre indenfor Danmarks Rige (Danmarks forhold til rigsdelene kaldes Rigsfællesskabet).

Eight Æ+Ø+Å in 382 characters.

Personally, I don't. I live in Muenchen, not München. When strictly needed, CTRL+C/CTRL+V from a Google search makes the trick.

When writing email/docs, autocorrector for the win.

Same thing in Italian: `e instead of è. Although, the German replacement is cleaner, I'd say.

> I live in Muenchen, not München

As someone from Espanya, I welcome you to the club.

Interestingly that's the Catalan spelling.

Not that you guys have it any better (with the ç and two, rather than one, sets of accent marks)

Oh we have more than two sets of accents, we have acute, grave, circumflex and dieresis. Spanish also has ¨ I think, like in güero or piragüismo.

We don't use the accents in the same way as Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan and Italian, it doesn't mark stress.

> I live in Muenchen, not München.

That's… quite certainly not an opinion shared with all of your fellow inhabitants.

You are right, but this is the internet, and the official website for the city is https://www.muenchen.de/, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You might want to consider using a keyboard layout that supports diacritics. I use UK Extended Winkeys for example, where I can do AltGr+[ followed by a letter to get it with a diaeresis, allowing me to type äöü. It supports almost every European language character.

I like that. Makes me wish I could just input all my text in Emacs which would make mapping such things to the “proper” sequence of strings very simple.

Not GP but I use a similar setup. I have an "extended" US keyboard layout where AltGr+(location of character on native keyboard layout) types the character. For example, AltGr+[ is "ü". I find this more convenient than the compose-like approaches suggested elsewhere in this thread.

I use it because programming language syntax is mostly ergonomic only on US-like layouts, e.g. typing "{" causes a lot of strain if you have to do it on every other line.

There's loads of ways. Dead keys is one, the compose key is another suitable one for multilingual folk. I can write ä ö ü ß pretty much automatically with the compose key on a US layout, as well as any é ë ê ü I might need in Dutch.

In the Netherlands letters with diacritics don't even have their own key (Dutch computers tend to use US plus €).

Using xkb map us(intl-unicode) it's a then alt gr + shift + " (I'm not totally sure if that's the correct, and ß is alt-gr + s.

French on US intl here ä ö ü ß are easy to make on such a setup but also the accented letters like é à ô or the infamous ç. It is even easier to type them in capital than it typically is on AZERTY (French keyboard) or QWERTZ (German one)

Personally I use a compose-key on Linux and Wincompose on Windows, with SyncThing to keep my .XCompose file synchronized between machines when I add a custom sequence.

I mapped my Caps-Lock key as Compose, so I hit compose-a-" to get ä, and so on through the set. I've made customs for Ω and µ since I use those a lot and couldn't remember their default sequences. It's handy having ® and ™ on tap as well, and I get typographical niceties like — and … vs - and ...

AltGr+q; AltGr+p; AltGr+y; AltGr+s and Bonus: § (AltGr+Schift+s)

Once comited to muscle memory it's very easy

I use US_Intl keyboard for Swedish and Portuguese and can type all of this without the need of special char keys: ä ö å - á à â ã. Just a mix of Opt+(u/a/e/i/n/`) and the next character I want with the diacritic.

Edit: and ß is just a Opt+s. It becomes quite logical after you get the hang of it.

On Linux I use the "altgr-intl" layout variation.

After pressing the right Alt key, AltGr, all of those characters are possible to type. Here's the layout:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/22/KB...

I swapped to us_intl as well full time a few years back (Swedish)

right alt + q = ä

right alt + w = å

right alt + s = ß

right alt + y = ü

It took a day or two to get a hang of it but it's such a relief not being constrained by everything being developed for US layouts

Not OP, but I have a Mac and use the "ABC - Extended" keyboard, which has a full set of diacritics. You type them by using the option (⌥) key and a letter to set the diacritics and then type the letter.

    ⌥u  e = ë

    ⌥w  e = ė

For example, the key sequence required to type Kayodé is:

    ⇧k  a  y  o  d  ⌥e  e

etc.

Same here

Reply on news.ycombinator.com