Linux @lemmy.ml pathief @lemmy.world 8 mo. ago

(Solved) How to replicate the windows' US International layout with dead keys?

I use a keyboard with an american layout because I find it much much better for programming. However, since I'm portuguese, I want to use some characters that don't exist in the american layout, such as á, é or ç. In windows I selected the US international layout with with dead keys and I could do everything.

' + a = á
' + c = ç

The US International with dead keys on linux mostly works but has some weird problems, or different behavior:

' + s = ś, I expected it to be 's. Ś doesn't exist in my regional dictionary. It is a problem when typing It's, which is transformed into itś. I could perform a space after pressing ' and it works, but I'm just not accustomed to do that.
' + m = ḿ, same problem as before.
' + c = ć, I expected it to be ç
' + t = ´t, I expected it to be 't

I found a workaround for the cedilla, that works on most apps but not on all. Is there a way to change this behavior system-wide? Maybe I can create my own "custom layout"?

EDIT: of course right after I post this I finally find a solution. I love that it's just a dot file I can bring with me anywhere. Gonna leave the post up anyway, in case anyone ever has the same problem.

6 comments

Well, right after posting I found a working solution. Doh!

Solution here, works great.
I use imput remapper for editing behavior of my input devices on my wayland gnome setup. I only changed the right super to behave like the left super and my legacy apple mouse to trigger super_L if squeeze it. I think it could help you as well with your problem, but you have to check, if it can remap key combinations to foreign signs, not so sure about that. https://github.com/sezanzeb/input-remapper

For Xorg there is something called xkb. I don't have experience in that. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_keyboard_extension
Another option -- if you only care about a US English layout for programming, have you considered just using a programming editor that has an input method friendly to that?

I kind of go the other way -- I'm in the US, and would like to have a way for inputting some things like Latin-1 stuff occasionally. Emacs has a lot of convenient input methods designed for this, inputting stuff on a US keyboard. And it seems almost certain to me -- there is no single standardized keyboard layout spanning Europe, so any European programmers must run into this -- that many programming editors must have application-level input support.
- I actually have grown to hate the Portuguese layout, or ISO in general. Why is the enter key so damn big? I currently own a Happy Hacking Keyboard 2 and can't imagine living without it.
I used to use US international, but a few years back switched to Eurkey which is essentially just an upgraded/turbocharged version.

Might be too much for you, but I can't live without it nowadays!
I'm a Spanish speaker, and what I did was using sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and assigned the right Alt key as the "compose" key: after pressing it I can press two characters I want to combine and it writes them out to the text output. I.e: to type á is Compose+'+a, to type ç is Compose+;+a, and so. That way I can use my US layout without losing special characters of ANY language

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