Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

[pwabrahams]

I have a very standard, common keyboad with the American layout on my Asus laptop. However, I want to type a few German characters. I could do it with the AltGr key -- except I can't find such a key on my keyboard. Since this is only an occasional thing, I certainly don't want to switch to an all-German layout. How can I type those characters?

[Rog131]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

Set the Compose key position: System Settings > Input Devices > Keyboard / Advanced / Compose key position.

[img width=400 height=314]http://img337.imageshack.us/img337/447/composekey.png[/img]


Links:
> Compose key
> Linux Compose Key Sequences

Compose key + ss => ß


There are also the character selector tools:

kcharselect

special character utility for KDE 4

KCharSelect is a utility for finding special characters which are not
available on the keyboard. It can search for characters by Unicode number,
display characters in any font, and copy characters to the clipboard so they
can be pasted into documents.

Character Selector plasma widget.

[img width=400 height=196]http://img62.imageshack.us/img62/8710/characterselector.png[/img]

[dibl]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

Or, if you merely add a Germany keyboard layout from KMenu > System Settings > Input > Keyboard > Layouts, then you only need to click the flag and change it to German when you need those characters, then you can click it back to American or whatever for normal use. That's the way I do it.

[toad]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

Or, if you merely add a Germany keyboard layout from KMenu > System Settings > Input > Keyboard > Layouts, then you only need to click the flag and change it to German when you need those characters, then you can click it back to American or whatever for normal use. That's the way I do it.

Ditto.

I also assigned the keyboard shortcut ALT+Shift to switching keyboard layouts (I believe the default is ALT+Shift+K which I think is cumbersome).

I like Rog131's method, too, though, 'cos I often have to use Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic characters

[fermier]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

Well, I also have to type regularly in various languages (French, German, Dutch, Spanish, English and my mother tongue). Having a normal old US qwerty keyboard, I always opt for the US International keyboard selection with dead keys. This allows me to type in all of those languages without having to change anything or click on anything when I switch between language. For German, typing scharff s can be replaced by ss, so it is no longer a problem, but can be typed with the right-alt + s keyboard combination, as can some of the spanish characters such as inverted ! and ?. See:

http://dry.sailingissues.com/us-inte...rd-layout.html

I must stress that these are the old keystroke combinations and for KDE4 you would need to go on an exploration of your keyboard in order to see all the amazing characters you can type directly from the keyboard without the need to go changing language/country settings.

Non-roman character languages still remain a nightmare for me and I truly admire those that type in Arabic, Hebrew or Cyrillic or the other eastern languages from a keyboard that is not meant for that language.

My biggest problem is usually for the system to realise that I have changed language and that it should now check spelling and grammar against this new language (sometimes several different languages in the same e-mail or current text). In OO it can be managed in a document, but it becomes tedious. Why must a PC/operating system assume that I should always work in just one language. Just because it is stupid, it must not insist that I must be stupid.. ;-)

The other problem is that I am used to have a qwerty keyboard and typing on it in the different languages, but try and convince the locals that they should sell a qwerty keyboard in one of those countries where it is not the "standard keyboard layout..." Sigh. It is especially trying when it comes to notebook or netbook PC's. You always have to import these PC's at a premium and then run the risk that it would not have any guarantee in this country. Sigh some more... It becomes most depressing... Babel must have been linguist hell, but at least you could use the same chisel to hammer away on your old marble block irrespective of what language you were chiseling in...

[Ole Juul]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

I'm with Rog on the compose key. I often write in Danish and I have the compose key set to right-Alt. So to type å I hold down the right-Alt and hit "aa", to type ø, it's "/o" , for æ it's "ae" and so on. It's fast, unobtrusive, and requires no special setup other than to chose a compose key of your choice.

Of course there are all sorts of other perks like © § and so on, but some basic signs are missing in this site's message box. I see the head on this site is set to charset=iso8859-1 so that could be the problem. UTF-8 is standard now.

[pwabrahams]

Compose (AltGr) key works for me

Thanks for all the suggestions. I've set the Win key as the compose key using the method that Rog131 suggested, and it works very well for my purposes (typing the titles of Bach cantatas in a music listing). If I actually were writing whole texts in German, I'd probably go with the alternate keyboard approach.

[Ole Juul]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

Ah yes, the Win key. That would be a very good use for it. I don't use keyboards that have one of those so I keep forgetting.

[dibl]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

Ah yes, the Win key. That would be a very good use for it. I don't use keyboards that have one of those so I keep forgetting.

Once there were Northgate "Omni-Click" keyboards -- now THOSE were some good keyboards! But, since the demise of Northgate (7 or 8 years ago), I've been using Microsoft keyboards. Who knew? They actually make excellent keyboards, and optical mice.

[askrieger]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

@dibl: Northgate has been out of business for a while now (a decade, or more), but Omnikey Ultra keyboards are still available, or at least they were 2 or 3 years ago, when I last purchased my fourth one. At that time they were called "Avant Stellar" keyboards. They were manufactured by something called "Creative Vision Technologies, Inc.". I got mine from a company called "Ergonomics Resources" (somewhere in Texas). Here is their website. I wouldn't use any other keyboard even though the new models have to be programmed in windoze. (I had to borrow a system from my daughter to do it.) They are expensive, but they survive rough handling, coffee spills, etc.

[dibl]

Re: Typing a few German characters on a vanilla American English keyboard

They were manufactured by something called "Creative Vision Technologies, Inc.". I got mine from a company called "Ergonomics Resources" (somewhere in Texas). Here is their website.

Hey hey heyyyyyyyyyyyy! Now that's interesting (reaches for credit card ....).

Thank you Al!