macOS dead keys immediately show an underlined version, any way to make it hidden?

[까이진]

Hi,

so when I switched from Windows to macOS typing dead keys changed a little in appearance.

On Windows the dead key is hidden, until you hit another key to form a combination (or emit the latter key with the revived key prepended when there is none), on macOS however you immediately see the dead key (underlined or otherwise highlighted), which then gets replaced after hitting the next key.

I have no problem with that, also it's (seemingly) only visual.

However, yesterday I suddenly noticed typing dead keys was completely hidden like on Windows and with that, a lot of key handling problems regarding the dead keys in various applications disappeared!

At that time I was on Catalina and mostly use High Sierra, so I thought it'd be a change in macOS, but after rebooting it's back to normal again in Catalina.

So now I wonder how the dead key behaviour actually changed in the first place and if there is a setting or some kind to reproduce it, because it actually solved by accident a bunch of big annoyances I experience daily due to applications handling my dead keys in a weird way...

Thanks in advance!

[Sorin Paliga]

Perhaps it would be useful for us to know (1) what keyboard layout you used (Korean?), (2) what macOS you are using, (3) what application you are using. Does it happen with ANY app. or with a certain one only?

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[까이진]

Here's some background:

I've created a layout with Ukelele, modified the keylayout-file manually, placed it in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/mine.keylayout and I'm using it for several months so far.

Its definition starts with

```

<keyboard group="0" id="-1400" name="My layout" maxout="1">

<layouts>

<layout first="0" last="0" mapSet="ANSI" modifiers="commonModifiers"/>

</layouts>

...

```

I use it on High Sierra and Catalina. The annoyances I experience are that IntelliJ (jvm) does not ignore the mentioned dead key placeholder, so in IdeaVim's visual mode that placeholder gets immediately interpreted as a command/shortcut instead of waiting and treating the next (combined) key as the command.

Or when pressing a dead key inside any textfield in IntelliJ and then a key that does not form a combination, the dead key's placeholder (which is the terminator) gets repeated instead of prepended, like ^ + k doesn't result in ^k but in ^^

Yesterday I edited /Library/Keyboard Layouts/mine.keylayout with sudo vim and some time later (probably after various mac sleeps) I saw the change in behaviour, that the dead key placeholder is no longer shown.

And also noticed IntelliJ correctly recognising a dead key combination in visual mode and handling stuff like ^k as expected.

After lots of searching with google, I also found an old message from Geke in here:

https://groups.google.com/g/ukelele-users/c/mmyLa8zN3bY/m/pRwcaLnEk30J

that would further the thought that my overwrite has something to do with it and it's probably just a bug in mac.

However, since it fixes the problems with IntelliJ (and I have a bunch of often used dead keys in my layout) I wanted to look into it.

[Gé van Gasteren]

Yesterday I edited /Library/Keyboard Layouts/mine.keylayout with sudo vim and some time later (probably after various mac sleeps) I saw the change in behaviour, that the dead key placeholder is no longer shown.

And also noticed IntelliJ correctly recognising a dead key combination in visual mode and handling stuff like ^k as expected.

After lots of searching with google, I also found an old message from Geke in here:

https://groups.google.com/g/ukelele-users/c/mmyLa8zN3bY/m/pRwcaLnEk30J

that would further the thought that my overwrite has something to do with it and it's probably just a bug in mac.

However, since it fixes the problems with IntelliJ (and I have a bunch of often used dead keys in my layout) I wanted to look into it.

Hi Cai Jin,

I completely forgot about that post…

…and yes, the "abnormal" behavior may have happened because you committed a major "crime" by editing a system software file that was – kind of – in use.

When you edit a keyboard layout in Ukelele, it prevents you from doing that, and after installing it, it tells you to log out and back in.

This is to give MacOS a chance to actually load the keyboard layout you’ve just installed, because – I think – in normal use, it works with a copy of the file in RAM.

Sometimes the thing seems to work normally without logging out and back in, but that doesn’t mean everything is great.

Regarding the desired behavior of dead keys, I’m no wiser now than I was 8 years ago. I guess it’ll take John or Tom to shed some light on that.