Bigbro's foray into the scary world of blogging
18 01 2010
I write in English and Irish reasonably frequently, with an occasional sojourn into German and French too. Of course, there is also a requirement that I be able to correctly punctuate and accent the names of colleagues with non-Anglicised names too - so that leaves me with some fairly extensive requirements for keyboard layouts. My operating system of choice is Ubuntu Linux and I consider myself fortunate that the international flavour of the developers appears to have rubbed off on its multi-lingual configuration.
If you want one language and layout, simply choose System | Preferences | Keyboard and choose the Layouts tab. There you can add or remove layouts at will - I prefer the Ireland UnicodeExpert layout as it allows me to type English, Irish, German and French (and probably other languages too) without changing layout at all. Note that if you want to add this layout 'by language' it's under English, rather than Irish or Gaeilge/Gaelic.
Once you have selected this keyboard layout you can, of course, type in English as normal. Note that it's a 'UK' keyboard layout rather than American (i.e. the quotation marks are above the number 2 and the @-sign is above the single quote character. Also, the hash is next to the Enter key and the monetary pound sign is above the 3.) To get letters with fadas on them, as required for Irish, simply use (usually) AltGr + vowel. AltGr + o produces ó for example. This makes typing as Gaeilge go han-shimplí ar fad. Níl a lán rudaí níos éasca ar chor ar bith.
As well as this feature - the ability to get fadas (or French acute accents) with a single key-combo, things like umlauts are not too difficult: a simple AltGr + : (colon) followed by a vowel will give an umlaut over the letter. AltGr + : followed by 'e' gives ë - easy-peasy. Note that AltGr + ; (semi-colon) will do - it 'implies' the Shift key, saving you from having to be a concert pianist or an emacs user to key the keystrokes right. AltGr + ^ (the 6 key) and an appropriate letter puts a hat over the letter. AltGr + ~ (tilde) puts a tilde over letters like 'n' for Spanish (I think...) There are lots more characters and languages supported without changing keyboard layout.
posted at: 12:25 | path: /technical | permanent link to this entry
