Re: Other European languages on a US keyboard

[cga2000]

On Fri, Jul 21, 2006 at 02:50:46PM EDT, Gene Kwiecinski wrote:
> >Unfortunately I am only able to type the US keyboard, so remapping
> >the keyboard might be a better solution than entering digraphs in the
> >long run but will not be painless..  And since I do not do this on a
> >regular basis, I am unsure whether it's really worth going to all the
> >trouble.
> 
> Would it be impractical to map, eg, <^><e> to whatever the code is for
> 'ê', ie, use prefix notation of [^'`~,], etc., as a prefix for
> [aeioucnAEIOUCN] as needed?  Wouldn't be *all* those combinations,
> but, eg, would only need <,><C> for &Ccedil;, <~><N> for &Ntilde; (and
> their lowercase counterparts, natch), but the rest would just be
> whatever accented chars you normally use, for grave, acute,
> circumflex, etc.
> 
Unless I'm mistaken you have actually reinvented the loadkeymap solution
discussed by Tony..?  

Don't take me wrong.. I am *not* being ironical..  

Quite the contrary.
        
> I'm not sure how a non-US keyboard does such things, so I can't
> suggest a more "transparent" way of doing it.
> 
> One other possibility would be the way my phone does multiple chars
> per key, eg, you'd hit '1' to get the generic '.', then '*' would
> cycle through different punctuation, and so on, 'til it'd get back to
> '.' again.  Maybe hitting alt-A would get you an 'a' and put you into
> a loop, then multiple hits of an F-key would cycle through the 3-4
> other chars and then back.  Any other key would "escape" the loop.
> Arrange them in the order you expect their occurrence, most
> commonly-used ones first.
> 
That, I had thought of but I discarded it as impractical.  That's also
the method that's commonly used to input languages that have too many
characters to fit on a reasonably-sized keyboard.. Chinese, eg.

Entering the accent, tilde, cedilla.. etc. followed by the letter is a
lot more in keeping with the wiring of my cortex..

> Eg, if you arrange them in the order acute/grave/circumflex/ring,
> simply hitting <M-a> would get you &aacute;.  Hit F2, and it gets you
> &agrave;.  Hit F2 again, circumflex.  Again, ring.  Again, acute.
> Lather, rinse, repeat.
> 
> *Implementing* this would for now be beyond my ken, or my barbie, but
> I'm sure someone might have some ideas how to best do it.  No?

Thanks

cga