Re: What layout should I use to emulate a German keyboard but also be able to type other European characters?

Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ

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Dec 29, 2022, 6:10:05 AM12/29/22

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On Donnerstag, 29. Dezember 2022 07:39:11 -03 Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I live in UK and have a UK QWERTY physical keyboard, but will have to
> write a low of documents in German with umlauts, Eszet and so on.
>
> As you can see from picture:
>
> https://i.ibb.co/pnPt0qS/Screenshot-at-2022-12-29-10-29-15.png
>
> I have quite a choice. Will the standard German do the job?
>
> Incidentally, there's a "QWERTY" option. Is that one used much in
> Germany?
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen

Unfortunately my experience is that not one size fits all. I have PC105
installed with standard German, also US and Latin American. That is
allright for Programming, German documents and Spanish but for
Portuguese and French I would need German dead tilde and dead grave
acute and one precludes the other. Also C-cedille is missing that would
require yet another keyboard layout: Brazilian Portuguese.
I do use KCharselect for the idioms I rarely write in if I don't know
the character code.
Just try it out and see if it fits your typing habits. Installing and
deinstalling keyboard layouts is not too time consuming.

All the best 2U

--
Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ / ZP5CGE

to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 29, 2022, 6:30:05 AM12/29/22

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On Thu, Dec 29, 2022 at 11:09:14AM +0000, Ottavio Caruso wrote:

> Am 29/12/2022 um 10:59 schrieb Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ:
> > I would need German dead tilde and dead grave
> > acute and one precludes the other.
>

> Thanks. In a nutshell, what's the difference between deal tilde and dead
> acute?

Dead tilde /also/ makes the tilde key (~) into a dead key, so
you can type ñ, ã and things. With deadgraveacute, only the
´ and ` keys are "dead keys".

> BTW, I have standard German layout and I am still able to do the French
> accented vowels:
>
> á é í ó ú ( ´ + vowel)
>
> à è ì ò ù ( SHIFT + ´ + vowel)
>
> It's a pain but doable.

C'm on. Back Then (TM), where dinosaurs with typewriters roamed
the Earth (I'll stop now ;-)

Cheers
--
t

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to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 29, 2022, 6:30:05 AM12/29/22

to

On Thu, Dec 29, 2022 at 10:39:11AM +0000, Ottavio Caruso wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I live in UK and have a UK QWERTY physical keyboard, but will have to write
> a low of documents in German with umlauts, Eszet and so on.
>
> As you can see from picture:
>
> https://i.ibb.co/pnPt0qS/Screenshot-at-2022-12-29-10-29-15.png
>
> I have quite a choice. Will the standard German do the job?
>
> Incidentally, there's a "QWERTY" option. Is that one used much in Germany?
>
> Mit freundlichen Grüßen

That depemds on your needs and software. For the occasional foreign
character, I like to use X's compose facility. I mapped the compose
key to CAPS LOCK (who needs that, right?), and then I can, for example
do COMPOSE + < + 3 to get ♥, or COMPOSE + , + c to get ç. The nice
thing is that the sequences are somewhat mnemonic, you can extend
them, and they don't contradict what is on your key labels.

This gets me along for the occasional French text on my German layout
keyboard.

If, on the contrary, you are typing blind or a totally different
language, there is the group: I can change my whole layout to
Greek by pushing both shift keys at once. This is in my ~/.xsessionrc

# cf. /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/base.lst
setxkbmap -model pc105 \
-layout "de,el" \
-variant "deadtilde," \
-option "compose:caps" \
-option "altwin:alt_super_win" \
-option "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp" \
-option "grp:shifts_toggle"

Of course, you'd have to adjust it to your own keaboard layout. And
to convince your X session to read your ~/.xsessionrc. And to find
out whether your desktop environment approves ov you playing with
such dangerous things [1]. But then it works :)

Cheers

[1] I solved that by getting rid of the DE, but not everyone will
like that
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t

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Greg Wooledge

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Dec 29, 2022, 7:20:05 AM12/29/22

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On Thu, Dec 29, 2022 at 12:23:00PM +0100, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> That depemds on your needs and software. For the occasional foreign
> character, I like to use X's compose facility. I mapped the compose
> key to CAPS LOCK (who needs that, right?), and then I can, for example
> do COMPOSE + < + 3 to get ♥, or COMPOSE + , + c to get ç. The nice
> thing is that the sequences are somewhat mnemonic, you can extend
> them, and they don't contradict what is on your key labels.
>
> This gets me along for the occasional French text on my German layout
> keyboard.

That's what I use as well. The instructions for customizing your XCompose
combinations are at <https://wiki.debian.org/XCompose>.

Max Nikulin

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Dec 29, 2022, 9:50:05 AM12/29/22

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On 29/12/2022 18:23, to...@tuxteam.de wrote:
> I mapped the compose
> key to CAPS LOCK (who needs that, right?)

/etc/default/keyboard:
XKBOPTIONS="grp:shift_caps_switch,compose:ralt"

- [CapsLock] to select first layout
- [Shift+CapsLock] to select second layout
- [RightAlt] for Compose

Gnome can not handle CapsLock as layout switch though.

So 2 or 3 keyboard layouts and Compose for other languages may be an option.

Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ

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Dec 29, 2022, 10:20:05 AM12/29/22

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On Donnerstag, 29. Dezember 2022 08:09:14 -03 Ottavio Caruso wrote:

> Am 29/12/2022 um 10:59 schrieb Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ:

> > I would need German dead tilde and dead grave

> > acute and one precludes the other.

>

> Thanks. In a nutshell, what's the difference between deal tilde and

> dead acute?

>

> BTW, I have standard German layout and I am still able to do the

> French accented vowels:

>

> á é í ó ú ( ´ + vowel)

>

> à è ì ò ù ( SHIFT + ´ + vowel)

>

> It's a pain but doable.

true but C-cedille and circonflex are not there. That's where dead grave acute comes into play. The circonflex is typed by ' ` and the character.

"The usual diacritics are the acute (⟨´⟩, accent aigu), the grave (⟨`⟩, accent grave), the circumflex (⟨ˆ⟩, accent circonflexe), the diaeresis (⟨¨⟩, tréma), and the cedilla (⟨¸ ⟩, cédille)." Wikipedia

The tilde diacritical mark ( ˜ ) above n is occasionally used in French for words and names of Spanish origin that have been incorporated into the language (e.g., El Niño). Like the other diacritics, the tilde has no impact on the primary alphabetical order.

Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ

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Dec 29, 2022, 10:30:05 AM12/29/22

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Hihi ...
If one is also programming dead tilde and dead acute grave are probably
not what one wants.

to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 29, 2022, 12:00:05 PM12/29/22

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On Thu, Dec 29, 2022 at 12:21:22PM -0300, Eike Lantzsch KY4PZ wrote:

[...]

> Hihi ...
> If one is also programming dead tilde and dead acute grave are probably
> not what one wants.

I do program. `-SPACE, ~-SPACE and so on are deep in my muscle
memory. I seem to prefer that than compose + (non dead) tile + n
to get ñ. But I think it is a very personal preference (I learnt
with a typewriter [1], and in Spanish: there we had the accent,
the diaeresis and the tilde as dead keys to put the letters under).

Cheers

[1] No, not snobbish. Just old ;-)

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Stefan Monnier

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Dec 29, 2022, 12:10:05 PM12/29/22

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> I do program. `-SPACE, ~-SPACE and so on are deep in my muscle
> memory.

Interesting. Wouldn't `` and ~~ be easier to type?

Stefan

to...@tuxteam.de

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Dec 29, 2022, 1:50:06 PM12/29/22

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At the beginning, yes. Later on, no, because you don't need to
release the first key completely before touching the second
(modern keyboards have rollover).

A bit like for a pianist, playing a trill on the same key is
more difficult than on two keys.

Cheers
--
t

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