mahasiswa Pentaglot Groupie Canada Joined 4433 days ago 91 posts - 142 votes Speaks: English*, French, Spanish, German, Malay Studies: Arabic (Egyptian), Persian, Russian, Turkish, Mandarin, Hindi
| Message 2665 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 3:19pm | IP Logged |
stifa wrote:
Edit:
... when you have shortcuts to four different keyboard layouts.
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Edit:
... when you have shortcuts to ten different keyboard layouts.
Edited by mahasiswa on 21 October 2012 at 3:19pm
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4874 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 2666 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 3:27pm | IP Logged |
Levi wrote:
stifa wrote:
... when you have shortcuts to four different keyboard
layouts.
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...when you've consolidated all your languages using the Latin alphabet into one
customized keyboard layout, in order to not be completely inundated with layouts.
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How did you do that?
The only latin letter I can't produce with my Norwegian keyboard layout is ß, and some
require too many keystrokes ñ ('AltGr' + '~' + 'n'). ü (and similar characters) only
require two though. I also have ø, æ and å taking up space.
Edited by stifa on 21 October 2012 at 3:29pm
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montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh
| Message 2667 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
I don't use keyboard layouts, but a nice piece of small-footprint freeware called "allchars".
It does require multiple keystrokes, but they are pretty straightforward, e.g. for ß it's just CTRL-s-s For å it's CTRL-a-o and similar, reasonably intuitive sequences for the other Latin characters.
(you can customise it to use something other than CTRL)
Works well for XP, reasonably OK for Vista, but I believe not for Windows 7 (but I don't have a W7 machine to try it on).
However, I believe there are other similar things around now that do work on W7.
I did use to know the numeric key sequences for the non-English characters (because I am something of a language nerd :-) ) that I needed, but that became a lot more difficult when I started using a laptop most of the time (no numeric pad and using the Fn key with certain letter keys seemed error prone and never seemed to quite work as intended, which is when I moved to allchars).
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 2668 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 8:25pm | IP Logged |
Levi wrote:
stifa wrote:
... when you have shortcuts to four different keyboard layouts.
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...when you've consolidated all your languages using the Latin alphabet into one customized keyboard layout, in order to not be completely inundated with layouts. |
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How many layouts do you use?
I've got 9 set up including English but don't usually switch languages in the same text so I'm not irritated by using the mouse to switch keyboards. I also need the Latvian, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian and Northern Saami layouts because they're too alien for the typical Western European/Anglosphere layout.
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hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5131 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe
| Message 2669 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 8:31pm | IP Logged |
Chung wrote:
I've got 9 set up including English but don't usually switch languages in the same text
so I'm not irritated by using the mouse to switch keyboards. |
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What operating system do you use?
I can only speak for Ubuntu use, but I use a keyboard shortcut to switch layouts. No
mouse needed. I bet there's a way to do it in Windows and Mac, too.
R.
==
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Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish
| Message 2670 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 9:06pm | IP Logged |
I'm on Windows XP or 7, depending on the computer. I too can use the keyboard to switch layouts, however the occasional use of the mouse isn't distracting for me when typing.
I should clarify though that I'm curious about Levi's technique of combining all of his languages of Latin-based alphabets into one layout. Ultimately I'd still need at minimum two layouts since I've got Ukrainian Cyrillic (which doubles as my Mari keyboard) too.
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stifa Triglot Senior Member Norway lang-8.com/448715 Joined 4874 days ago 629 posts - 813 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, EnglishC2, German Studies: Japanese, Spanish
| Message 2671 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 9:37pm | IP Logged |
I considered his idea as well, until I realised that I already had ø, æ and å hogging
the space already. :p It would be nice to add an ß-key though; this would have
eliminated the need for a German keyboard completely... though it would've been nice to
have single keys for ä ü ö and ñ as well. And I don't use English layouts at all,
because it seems like pretty much any latin-based keyboard layout cover the 26 letters
of the English alphabet.
Edited by stifa on 21 October 2012 at 9:38pm
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Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5568 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian
| Message 2672 of 3737 21 October 2012 at 10:03pm | IP Logged |
stifa wrote:
How did you do that?
The only latin letter I can't produce with my Norwegian keyboard layout is ß, and some
require too many keystrokes ñ ('AltGr' + '~' + 'n'). ü (and similar characters) only
require two though. I also have ø, æ and å taking up space. |
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I used Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator, which is free.
Chung wrote:
How many layouts do you use?
I've got 9 set up including English but don't usually switch languages in the same text so I'm not irritated by using the mouse to switch keyboards. I also need the Latvian, Polish, Slovak, Ukrainian and Northern Saami layouts because they're too alien for the typical Western European/Anglosphere layout. |
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At the moment, I have five layouts: Latin, Cyrillic, IPA, Chinese and Japanese. The Latin one is capable of writing just about any language written in the Latin alphabet from Icelandic to Vietnamese. Cyrillic covers Russian (including pre-1917 letters), Belarusian, Ukrainian, Serbian, Macedonian and Bulgarian.
I find not having a separate layout for each language very convenient. It's not just for switching between languages, it's great just to be able to properly type foreign names without stopping. Even if I had a separate layout for every language I study, it wouldn't be enough, because sometimes I want to talk about Łódź or Hồ Chí Minh, or just have the Pīnyīn transliterations of my Chinese vocabulary items.
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