⚠️ DO NOT consider anything in this repo as stable, it's all WIP!
Do you know the "United States-International" keyboard under Windows? I think this layout is very practical for international users who need to write a lot of non-ASCII chars in different languages (German umlauts, anyone?) while still preserving a regular US-layout.
...
Wait, why would I use a US-layout as a German Software Engineer? One simple reason: Efficiency! Many keys (think of / ~ etc.) are way more easily accessible. Additionally, some IDE keyboard layouts (for instance in JetBrains products) are also counting on easy access to these keys.
However, I also sometimes need to use umlauts (e.g. when writing with my colleagues). This is where the layout shines: It's still possible to "easily" type them while still profiting from a more efficient base layout.
For example: Whenever I want to type an - äähm - let's say ä, I have two choices:
<AltGr> + <q>→ Immediately producesä" + <a>→ After pressing", the layout awaits another char (the"functioning as a lazy modifier) and is not immidiately printed. Finally, when pressing thea, the layout "knows" that you truly wanted anawith umlauts!
Try it yourself! It's easier to get the point(s) then.
The first one is more difficult to remember, but the latter comes with a bigger downside: DEAD KEYS! REST IN PEACE!
Whenever you literally want to write a ", a space is needed.
And oh no - there are even more of these modifying keys, e.g. ^ or `.
All these keys are dead! Let's resurrect them:
Under Linux, using undead keys is a trivial task because there is a special option (nodeadkeys) for the altgr-intl keyboard, for example using xorg setxkbmap:
setxkbmap -layout us -variant altgr-intl -option nodeadkeys
Under Windows, there is no pre-defined magic layout for nodeadkeys and that is a huge pain.
Consequently, we have to build it manually. One upside is that Microsoft provides a free tool named "Keyboard Layout Creator" for this purpose.
I searched GitHub and hurray - luckily, user @umanovskis already created one and provides...
[...] a layout that is like United States-International but removes the apostrophe ('), double quotes ("), circumflex (^), backtick (``) and tilde (~) as dead keys, while leaving the AltGr dead key combinations intact. (See README)
That's exactly what we want! I forked the repo to achieve three additional goals:
- Provide reproducable builds using a PowerShell script that can be easily understood
- Use GitHub actions to compile it:
- No need to download, install, execute the Microsoft tool just to compile your layout
- No need to trust a 3rd party to compile it without a possibly malicious intent
- Aggregate other useful, special or international keyboard layouts in the future
That's what this repository is all about.
⚠️ Not stable yet
| Name | Country | Variant | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| usintl-undead | US | AltGr-Intl | Undead |
| usintl-undead-esc | US | AltGr-Intl | Undead, Caps mapped to ESC for efficient vim usage using a hack mentioned in the Colemak forum |
To see a comparison between the original "United States-International" and the undead/nodeadkeys version for instance in your Git Bash, simply call less -R layouts/usintl-undead/diff-usintl-orig.txt. I dumped a git diff saving the respective files as UTF-8 before.