Re: squeeze us-intl w/ dead keys on i386/pc/qwerty keyboard
On Wed, Jan 05, 2011 at 06:39:53AM EST, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> On Tue, 04 Jan 2011, Doug wrote:
> > There's a better way. It uses a subset of Unicode and the "compose"
> > key. On a normal PC keyboard, you have to make a compose key out
>
> You must be joking. That will work well only if you're writing english
> text, which will require the use of the compose key rarely.
>
> Perfect dead key support is a *must* for many languages. It is a
> reverse killer feature: if it is not there, it kills the product ;-)
Matter of preference, I would say..
The nationals of some European countries are at home with dead keys
because that's the way their keyboards are laid out, Portugal is a good
example. And then there are those countries that favor precomposed
glyphs and an additional modifier, such as Germany.
Probably one of the strengths of English as an international language is
that you can type it without any remapping on just about any keyboard
that's based on the latin alphabet.
Apart from the tiny minority who happen to be literate in two or more
languages outside English, the problem is mostly for those who need to
type another language on a standard U.S. keyboard.
And the fact that U.S. keyboards have one key less (the one at the
bottom left of the keyboard, next to Left-Shift) than European keyboards
does not make things any easier.
Personally, even though I am pretty sure that with adequate practice,
dead keys would eventually prove more efficient than using AltGr, I find
the mechanism confusing because with most text-entry systems.. you don't
see anything.. hm.. did I hit that dead key or did I miss it..? What do
I do now.. because if I hit it again, it's going to beep at me.. all
rather stressful.. :-) And continually having to hit the spacebar after
single quotes is really a pain.
As to the X Compose key, (and alter egos like Vim and GNU/screen's
digraphs), it gives you the worst possible experience: confusing like
dead keys, and impractical since one extra keystroke is required for
each combined letter. Their only good point is that the key combinations
being mnemonic in nature, you don't have to memorize key locations.
Maybe the better solution for those who program and type in English most
of the time, and only occasionally need to switch to another language is
dead keys accessible via Mod3?
Otherwise, if they really are serious about typing in half a dozen
languages, or for those who constantly need to switch between Sanskrit
and ancient Greek, the way to go is probably to acquire a 105-key
unlabeled European keyboard and toggle layouts on the fly. But even for
such tiny minorities, acquiring typing skills on different layouts
requires considerable time and effort.
cj
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